Another bump in the road for

By Paul Reynolds
The British government is expected to announce the expulsion of an Israeli diplomat in connection with Israel’s alleged misuse of British passports – a number of which were carried by a hit squad that assassinated Palestinian Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai.

In February, the government set up an investigation into the matter.

At the time, official language in announcing that the Israeli ambassador in London Ron Prosor would be going to the Foreign Office was notably moderate.

A statement said simply that “given the links to Israel of a number the British Nationals affected, there will be a meeting between the FCO Permanent Under Secretary and the Israeli Ambassador tomorrow”. This was an invitation not a summons.

It was, in February, a matter of Britain asking questions, not making protests and taking retaliatory action (such as demanding an apology, restricting official contacts or even expelling the ambassador for a time).

During his meeting with Mr Prosor, the permanent under-secretary Sir Peter Ricketts asked for full Israeli co-operation with the British inquiry. This may have proved problematic if Mossad was involved. Israel would not want to reveal too much. So a lot depends on how the word “cooperation” is defined. A total failure to cooperate would trigger a British response.

Promise

One complicating factor is that in 1987, the Israelis promised Britain that it would not use British passports in secret operations again.

On that occasion, eight British passports reckoned to be for Mossad agents were found in a bag in a West German telephone booth.

The then Israeli ambassador in London, Yehuda Avner, did find himself on the receiving end of a British protest.

If it turns out that the assurance given then has been broken, the British diplomatic reaction will be more severe.

Britain might also press other European countries whose passports have surfaced in this affair – Ireland, France and Germany – to take a firm line.Ritual element

However, these events have a certain ritual about them. New Zealand got angry with Israel in 2004 when two Israeli agents were found to be using New Zealand passports. Diplomatic ties were frozen, but were quietly resumed a year or so later after an Israeli apology.

In 1987, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did order the closure of the Mossad station in London for a time – though no doubt it carried on in different ways – after the kidnapping of the Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu.
But that did not affect her support for Israel and in due course, normal service resumed.

If it finds the evidence this time, Britain will no doubt demand satisfaction. But neither Britain or Israel will want this to escalate into a full-scale row.

The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is sympathetic to Israel and there is a delicate intelligence relationship that needs to be preserved as far as possible in view of the threat to both countries from Islamist extremists.

Difficult relationship

This might well be one of those bumps in the road that have dogged British-Israeli relations for decades, going back even beyond the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

It has rarely been an easy relationship and has been marked by contradictions, resentment and touchiness on both sides.

The historic promise from Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour in 1917 that Britain would establish a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, while also promising that the “civil and religious rights” of the “existing non-Jewish communities” would not be prejudiced, proved impossible for Britain to deliver.

Britain found itself having to put down a Palestinian-Arab revolt in 1936 only to be attacked by Jewish groups wanting Britain out of Palestine after World War II (though during the war there was strong Jewish support through the formation of the Jewish Brigade of the British army). Britain pulled out of Palestine in anger and chaos.

The Israelis complain that Britain reneged on the Balfour promise in a White Paper in 1939 which rejected the concept of a two-state solution and severely restricted Jewish immigration at a time when Jews were being murdered by the Nazis.

Reliance on US

For years, there was a strand in the British Foreign Office that was hostile to Israel.

Britain delayed recognising Israel as a state for eight months. The US did so within minutes. You can occasionally hear echoes of that hostility in London, but there are really only echoes, not policy.

Things improved in the 1950s and 60s. In fact, Britain and France were Israel’s main weapons providers then, not the United States. Israel won the 1967 war with French aircraft and British tanks. And in the Suez operation in 1956, Britain and France colluded with Israel in the invasion of Egypt, until the US pulled the plug.

Then, Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath slapped an arms embargo on Israel and other combatants in the 1973 war, and Israel has relied on the US ever since.

It no longer puts its trust in any European government, though it likes their goodwill.

The Europeans try to balance their support for Israel as a state with their sympathy for the Palestinians as a people. They also have to be mindful of their relationship with the Arab world as a whole.

Relations at the best of times can turn touchy. There is currently a row over the British system of allowing magistrates to issue arrest warrants for alleged war crimes and, according to Israel, the British government has been too slow in changing this.

Incidents like Dubai make maintaining a balance more difficult.
http://intifada-palestine.com/2010/03/another-bump-in-the-road-for-british-israeli-relations/

Possible Consequences for the Israeli Mossad

Now that the latest atrocity of Israel has badly blown back, with the pictures of 11 death squad assassins published worldwide, 2 names of Palestinians connected to the PA published, 6 more suspects in Dubai, knowledge that the whole crime was coordinated from Austria, consequences are inevitable. These are not consequences under national or international law, but the kinds of consequences which are due when mafia thugs or secret agents are burnt, and which seldom come to the knowledge of the public.

* Will the mossad get rid of the elements of the death squad after the assassination of Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai?
* How will the mossad deal with their problems?
* What would they use to get rid of the elements which participated in the assassination of al-Mabhouh?
* Will it be a mass culling, will they be killed in a soft and merciful way, or will it be a messy butchery?
* Will the bodies of these people be disposed by them, dropping them from airplanes into the ocean, or will they become part of the fundaments of yet to be built bridges?
Whatever happens, the Dubai 11 and all other people who participated in any capacity in this botched assassination must count on being killed if they do not surrender to or are not captured by the security forces of another nation. Regardless of what intentions the mossad has towards these elements, they are finished, and, even if the manage to evade capture, their refuge in Israel will be only temporary at best, until the pertinent decisions are taken.

Interpol on Thursday issued arrest notices for 11 suspects – six listed with British passports, three Irish, one French and one German – wanted by Dubai for the killing.

Now that they have been put on the wanted list of Interpol, that their faces are known, and that Dubai has stated that their retina prints taken at Dubai airport and other details will be published, they represent a giant liability to the Zionist regime of Israel. They are publicly known carriers of secrets, presumably in the know of many terrorist deeds of the mossad around the world. Their disposal will become an inevitable consequence, even a priority, to protect the secrets of global terrorism practiced by the mossad.
Meanwhile, the Dubai Police continues revealing new information relating to the murder of Mabhouh. They stated that the British, French, German and Irish authorities expressed during contacts with Dubai officials their strong displeasure because of the fact that the passports of their nations were used to enter Dubai and perpetrate this crime. Experts of the Dubai Police said that "the technology of recording retina prints at the airport will help to identify the perpetrators of the crime in Dubai, as it is difficult to hide or falsify this imprint, even if the person has surgery to change their face". The videotape distributed by the Dubai Police about the perpetrators of the al- Mabhouh murder shows that all of them passed through the airport, which uses records retina prints.

Palestinians elements supporting Mosssad

* Why did the Dubai Police not show the photos of the two Palestinians who were arrested in the wake of the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai?
* Why did the police not publish the names of the Palestinian suspects?
* Is it because they are elements connected to the Palestinian National Authority?

Last week, the Dubai police stated that had they had arrested two Palestinians among 18 Dahlan_1suspects in the al-Mabhouh assassination, but they have not yet identified the two Palestinians or revealed their pictures.

Instead, the leader of Hamas, Mohammad Nazzal, announced the names of Palestinian detainees who were involved in the assassination of al-Mabhouh besides the Israeli death squad. He named them as Ahmed Hassanein, a former member of the Palestinian Intelligence Service, and Anwar Shuhaiber, a former officer in the Palestinian Preventive Security Forces. Both are former members of the PA security forces with links to Mohammed Dahlan of Fatah. Hamas claims that the senior Fatah official visited Dubai after these elements were arrested in order to try to persuade the Dubai authorities to release their operatives.

The Palestinian detainees are suspected of providing the mossad death squad with logistical aid, including renting cars and hotel rooms for them. According the Chief of the Dubai police, the Palestinians met the commander of the mossad death squad in a shopping center.

The spokesman of the Jordanian government, Nabil al-Sharif, revealed last Monday that Jordanian authorities handed these two Palestinians to the Dubai authorities. The detainees were caught by the airport security after their arrival at Amman airport.

Meanwhile, Mahmoud al-Zahar called on the West to forbid Israel from using their land to enter Arab countries and kill Palestinians. He said: "If the West allows the Zionist enemy to turn its land into land where Palestinian Muslims are murdered, or leave from it to Arab countries to assassinate our people, then we will confront them as God compels us too: 'One evil for another'", he said at a sermon in a Gaza mosque Friday.

While all the consequences and the scandal in the wake of this crime are still developing, it is noteworthy to mention that the Reut Institute, an extremist think tank which advises the Israeli regime, has recently released two the executive summaries of two reports (see here) and (here) which deal with the increasing "deligitmization" which the zionist entity suffers (which of course can't be explained). It is funny to note that among their "policy options" they write

"18 – Relationship-based diplomacy with elites and 'influentials' – An effective barrier against delegitimization is a network of personal relationships. Working within identified hubs, Israel should aspire to maintain thousands of personal relationships with political, financial, cultural, media, and security-related elites and influentials."

Now that Israel is successfully in the process of affirming its image of an obnoxious cry-baby and leg-humping hyena, a liability to anybody who has anything to do with them, one can't help but smirking while asking where these thousands of "personal relationships" are to come if not from among people who are ignorant of their own best interests.

Kawther Salam
http://palestinethinktank.com/2010/02/20/possible-consequences-for-the-israeli-mossad/