Israeli Minister Denies Link to Hamas Leader’s Death (Update1)

Bloomberg.com

By Calev Ben-David and Jonathan Ferziger

Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Israeli National Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau denied claims by Hamas that his visit to an international conference in Abu Dhabi this month was connected to the death of one of the Islamic movement’s leaders in neighboring Dubai.

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was found dead in his Dubai hotel room on Jan. 20 and Hamas officials charged that Israeli agents who arrived with Landau in the United Arab Emirates three days before were responsible for his death.

“My entourage accompanied me to an international conference and was with me the whole time,” Landau told Israel Army Radio. “What we are seeing now is a wild Mediterranean imagination going hand-in-hand with Arab-Palestinian rage about an Israeli flag flying in a formal way over the convention hall.”

Israel has accused al-Mabhouh of being behind the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers in Gaza in 1988. Most of those alleged to have been involved in the soldiers’ deaths have since been detained or killed by Israel, including Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 2004.

Al-Mabhouh entered Dubai Jan. 19 and his body was found in a hotel room there the next day, according to a statement from the emirate’s Information Office. Doctors who examined his body said he died after an electric shock, his brother, Fayek al- Mabhouh, told Israel’s Haaretz. Israel tried in the past to kill al-Mabhouh several times, the newspaper cited his brother as saying.

Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar said in an interview that al- Mabhouh’s killers could have entered the U.A.E. with false passports as members of Landau’s entourage.

Professional Gang

“Israel wants to change the rules of the game and to open the international field for battles, so it will be responsible for this,” he told reporters in Gaza City.

Dubai police said that “initial investigations indicate the crime was carried out by a professional criminal gang that had been following the victim,” according to the Information Office. The gang members have fled the country, police said.

Israel had no comment on the matter, said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Al-Mabhouh helped found the Hamas armed wing known as Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades in 1988, at the beginning of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel. The militant leader, originally from the Gaza Strip, fled the enclave in 1988 and had been living abroad, mainly in Damascus, with his wife and children. Al-Mabhouh was responsible for smuggling arms from Iran to Gaza, Haaretz said.

Seized Control

Hamas seized control of Gaza in clashes with the Fatah faction of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007, leaving Abbas to administer the West Bank. Hamas, which has the backing of Iran and Syria, is regarded as a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and European Union.

Landau traveled to Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates capital, to attend the International Renewable Energy Conference. U.A.E. authorities confirmed the Israeli minister’s presence at the conference and emphasized it won’t change the Gulf nation’s refusal to recognize Israel.

--With assistance from Saud Abu Ramadan in Gaza City.

--Editors: Peter Hirschberg, Louis Meixler.

To contact the reporters on this story: Calev Ben-David in Jerusalem at +972-2-640-1105 or cbendavid@bloomberg.net Jonathan Ferziger in Tel Aviv at +9722-754-1142 or jferziger@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at +972-2-640-1104 or phirschberg@bloomberg.net

Questions raised after death of Hamas leader

AM is Australia's most informative morning current affairs program. AM sets the agenda for the nation's daily news and current affairs coverage.
Anne Barker reported this story on Saturday, January 30, 2010 08:12:00

ELIZABETH JACKSON: The militant Palestinian group Hamas has accused Israel of assassinating one of its most senior operatives. Mahmoud al Mabhouh was apparently electrocuted on a visit to Dubai.

His family and Hamas officials believe his death bears all the signs of an attack by Mossad - Israel's intelligence agency - although neither Mossad nor Israel ever comments on such operations.

Authorities in Dubai say they've identified several European passport holders as suspects, as our Middle East Correspondent Anne Barker reports.

ANNE BARKER: Mahmoud al Mabhouh was a prime candidate for assassination.

The 50 year old Gazan militant was a founding member of Hamas' armed wing the Qassam Brigades, which over three decades has waged suicide bombings and thousands of rocket attacks on Israel.

A pro Hamas website even boasts of his role in kidnapping and killing two Israeli soldiers in the late 1980s. He was jailed many times, and in retaliation Israeli forces demolished his home.

FAYEQ AL MABHOUH (TRANSLATED): From the very first moments we had no doubt that Mossad's hands were behind the assassination.

In fact we accuse Israel and Mossad in particular. We leave it to the investigations to be carried out within the movement or the military apparatus of the Qassam brigades.

ANNE BARKER: Al Mabhouh lived in Syria, along with other Hamas leaders exiled from Gaza.

He was in Dubai apparently on a Hamas mission, but died within hours of arriving from electrocution. His brother says an electrical appliance had been held to his head.

Israel has made no comment in keeping with standard practice. But Hamas's top political leader Khaled Meshal has vowed revenge.

"You may kill us, you may hurt us" he said, "but we're going to kill your claimed legitimacy and we will tear the false image you've painted in recent decades".

Israel has a long history of targeting Islamist militants for assassination. Just recently two Hamas men were killed in a mysterious late night bombing in Beirut. Again Hamas suspected Israeli agents.

And most famously, Israeli forces botched an attempt to assassinate Khaled Mishal in Jordan three years ago.

The threat of assassination though hasn't convinced Hamas to renounce its fight against Israel. Its official charter still calls for the Jewish state's obliteration and replacement by an Islamic caliphate.

Late yesterday thousands attended Al Mabhouh's funeral at a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. In Gaza, posters of him are already on the streets portraying him as a martyr.

This is Anne Barker in Jerusalem for AM.

Note: Has anyone read Eli Cohen's biography? Great read! BeeSting

Long history of Israel's 'covert killing'

PLO second in command Khalil al-Wazir (left) was assassinated by Israeli commandos in Tunisia

By Heather Sharp
BBC News, Jerusalem

The Islamic movement Hamas claims that the death of one its senior commanders, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, is the latest in Israel's history of assassinating individuals it believes to have been behind attacks on its citizens.

Israel's general policy is to neither confirm nor deny allegations about the activities of its intelligence agents but it is notable that many of its enemies meet suspicious and violent deaths.

"We are witnessing an intense intelligence struggle, most of it is covert, some of it overt," said Ronen Bergman, author of By Any Means Necessary, and other books and articles on Israel's covert operations. Among the best documented of Israel's assassinations were a wave of killings of pro-Palestinian militants in Paris, Nicosia, Beirut and Athens, carried out in response to the hostage crisis at the Munich Olympics in 1972 which resulted in the deaths of 11 Israelis.

Methods used included a booby-trapped telephone, a bomb planted in a bed, and a raid in Beirut in which current Defence Minister Ehud Barak dressed as a woman.

There are even claims that a poisoned chocolate was later used to kill a commander of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in East Germany in 1978.

In 1987 Israel made no attempt to disguise their assassination of Khalil al-Wazir - known as Abu Jihad - the Palestine Liberation Organisation's military leader and second in command.

Israeli commandos crept into Tunisia, where the PLO's exiled leadership was based, and shot him several times in his own home before escaping by sea.

It was an operation in which Mr Barak is also believed to have been involved.

Covert failure

In 1997 during the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first term in office, one special operation went humiliatingly wrong.Israeli agents tried to kill Khaled Meshaal, who was then a fund-raiser for Hamas based in Amman.

Disguised as Canadian tourists, they injected poison into his ear - but he was rushed to hospital before it took full effect.

Mr Meshaal's life was literally saved by Jordan's then King Hussein, who was outraged by the attack and - boosted by pressure from then US President Bill Clinton - demanded the Israeli government hand over the antidote.

The agents - who had been arrested - were exchanged for an Israeli apology and the release of 20 prisoners, including Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, Hamas's spiritual leader.

Mr Meshaal has gone on to become Hamas's Damascus-based leader.

Targeted killings

As the second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, raged in the years after 2000, Israel turned its sights on militant leaders within Gaza and the West Bank.Militant groups sent waves of suicide bombers to attack Israeli civilian targets such as buses and cafes.

Part of Israel's response was the controversial policy it described as "targeted" killings - Amnesty International described them as "extra-judicial".

Palestinians say dozens of militant figures, including Sheikh Yassin and another senior Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, were killed, in many cases by missiles launched from helicopters.

But in 2008, allegations of Israeli action farther afield intensified with the death of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh, implicated in numerous bomb attacks and a wave of hostage-taking in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Hezbollah wasted little time in blaming Israel for his death in a car bomb in Damascus.

The group is thought to have been trying to avenge his death ever since.

'Revenge'

Investigative journalist Mr Bergman says the past three to four years have seen the Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria alliance "far more exposed" by Israeli intelligence, and on the defensive.

Even in recent weeks, the deaths of two Hamas members in a bombing in Lebanon, an attempt to bomb an Israeli diplomatic convoy in Jordan, and the mysterious killing of an Iranian scientist - though a quantum physicist, not a nuclear specialist - offer more material for speculation.

Targeting Mr Mabhouh would fit with Israel's historical policy, Mr Bergman adds.

"In some cases Israel has decided to close the circle and take revenge on people who were behind symbolic acts of terrorism - not necessary the most violent or lethal acts," he said.

And this can happen years after the incident in question.

Hamas claims Mr Mabhouh is the mastermind of the capture and killing of two Israeli soldiers, Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon, in 1989.

Sgt Sasportas's body was located seven years later, from a sketched map supplied by the Palestinians, and dug up from underneath a road that had been built over it.

The incident was an emotional one for the public in a country where most people serve in the military.

Mr Mabhouh's brother said Israel had been trying to kill him for years, and had unsuccessfully attempted to poison him six months earlier in Beirut.

But the reports remain confusing, with allegations that he was electrocuted, suffocated and poisoned all circulating - as well as reports that Hamas initially announced that he had died from bone disease a week earlier.

And this incident, like many before it, may remain shrouded in mystery, even as Hamas vows to take revenge.