The Dubai Police has displayed a degree of courage in pursuing investigations into the murder of senior Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. The Chief of Dubai Police, Dahi Khalfan Tamim, has been quoted as saying that he is 99 percent, if not 100 percent, certain that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, is behind the 19 January 2010 assassination. It is not easy for the Police Chief to be so emphatic about Mossad’s role, considering that Dubai has close informal ties with Israel.

The Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Liberman, has neither confirmed nor denied Mossad’s involvement. Israel, he says, maintains “a policy of ambiguity” on intelligence matters.

There is some pressure from within Israel upon the government to take action against Mossad. The Israeli daily, Haaretz, has demanded that the head of Mossad, Mier Dagan, be removed. This is unlikely to happen.

British, Irish and French government leaders have also made some noise about the murder since passport details of their citizens were apparently, fraudulently, used by members of the hit squad. Passport details of six British citizens, three Irish and I French, were involved in the sordid episode. Since these governments have been protective of Israel in the past, however serious its misconduct, no one expects them to apply any pressure on the Netanyahu regime on this occasion.

It is because most governments, especially those in the West, have not taken the Israeli government to task for its lawless behaviour that it has literally got away with murder, time and time again. In 1988, for instance, the Mossad, it is alleged, killed Abu Jihad

( Khalid al-Wazir) the second in command to Yasser Arafat. Arafat himself, it is widely believed, was poisoned to death by Mossad. Prominent Hamas leaders like Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the movement’s spiritual founder, and his successor, Rantissi, were both assassinated by the Israeli security forces. One of Hamas’s current leaders, Khaled Mishal, was almost killed in an Israeli operation in Jordan in the late nineties.

It is this diabolical track record that prompted the renowned Israeli human rights activist, Uri Avnery, to observe a few days ago that, “ the Dubai affair is reinforcing the image of Israel as a bully state, a rogue nation that treats world public opinion with contempt, a country that conducts gang warfare, that sends mafia-like death squads abroad, a pariah nation to be avoided by right-minded people.”

This is why by revealing the truth about the murder in Dubai, the Dubai Police may be helping, in a small way, to tame the rogue state.

President,

International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

Petaling Jaya,

Malaysia.

21 February 2010.