Two mistakes have been committed by the Arabs so far in facing the assassination of Hamas Commander Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh. The first is security authorities in Dubai considering those who carried out the murder to be “stupid” because they left all these traces pointing to them. The second is the threat made by one leader of the targeted Islamic movement, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, of moving the fight against Israel abroad. Indeed, it clearly cannot be hidden from an agency experienced in killings and special operations such as the Mossad that there are surveillance cameras everywhere in Dubai, and certainly its agents have surveyed the hotel where the operation took place and investigated its details and its secrets, especially as Mabhouh had stayed there many times in the past, at a time when he had certainly been pursued for a long period until the order to eliminate him was issued. In fact, one can say that the use of European passports – which proved not to be forged as the authorities of Britain, Ireland and France had claimed – in a manner that reveals the identity of their real holders and their Israeli source, considering that all or most of them reside in Israel itself, calls for wondering about the reasons that would make the Mossad “take it easy” to such an extent in the security of an operation of such importance, reaching the point, according to a British newspaper, of informing authorities in London of its intention to use their passports in an “overseas” operation. What is known is that the level of support for Israel in the world has witnessed over the past few years a noticeable decrease, especially after the Gaza war which made the Hebrew state the object of condemnation for international public opinion, while Hamas and the besieged Gaza Strip enjoy its sympathy. What is also known is that there are lawsuits in a number of European countries against Israeli military and civilian leaders responsible for the brutal bombing of Gaza with internationally prohibited weapons, and that those leaders are now forced to obtain guarantees that they will not be arrested every time they want to travel to a European capital. Such a “shift” was helped by the Goldstone Report, which aroused Israel's anger and which returns to the United Nations general Assembly next week based on an Arab draft resolution demanding that both the Israeli government and the Hamas movement conduct “independent and credible investigations according to international standards in dangerous violations of humanitarian, international and human rights law” as stated in the report, in order to “ensure accountability and justice”. And perhaps the whole issue will move to the Security Council if the Secretary-General of the international organization considers that there are delays in its implementation. At a time when settlement-building in occupied Palestinian territory arouses the discontent of the Americans and Europeans and brings forth their pressures and their calls for freezing it, which is the condition laid down by the Palestinian Authority for resuming any kind of negotiations with Israel, the Israelis feel concerned about the regression of their ability to characterize the Palestinians as “terrorists” and about the extent to which the latter are seeking to obtain their legitimate rights. This is thanks to the decision taken by the late Yasser Arafat on the eve of the First Intifada of moving the confrontation with Israel to the Palestinian interior and of banning any operations abroad. Possibly the “public” manner in which Israel carried out Mabhouh's assassination holds an open invitation to Hamas to respond with a similar assassination perhaps, one which would return to Israel the asset it has lost, grant it the pretext and the justification to carry on with its crimes, undermine the growing – even if slowly – international sympathy towards the Palestinian people, and help the Israelis in their smear campaign against the Palestinian Authority, depicted as a group of “corrupt” politicians. Zahar's statements, about Hamas fighting Israel in the same arena and responding to it in the European countries the passports of which were used, if these countries do not work on preventing Israel from using their soil in its war against the movement, can only be considered a heedless response to Israeli inducement. We can only hope that this matter will not indeed be crowned with a third mistake, one that may have fatal consequences.
