Philippe Naughton,
Catherine Philp and James Hider,
Jerusalem
March 23, 2010

Britain has expelled Mossad’s chief representative in London after a criminal investigation blamed the Israeli spy agency for the cloning of British passports used in the assassination of a senior Hamas operative in Dubai.

The diplomat's expulsion was announced in a statement to Parliament by David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who said that Israel's "intolerable" misuse of British passports had shown a "profound disregard" for the UK's sovereignty.

"The fact that this was done by a country which is a friend, with significant diplomatic, cultural, business and personal ties to the UK, only adds insult to injury," Mr Miliband said.

"No country or government could stand by in such a situation," he added. "I have asked that a member of the Embassy of Israel be withdrawn from the UK as a result of this affair and this is taking place."

The 12 passports were among at least 26 forged European and Australian identity documents used by the members of an Israeli hit squad which murdered the Hamas armourer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel on January 19.

Mr Miliband said that an investigation carried out by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which sent officers both to Dubai and Israel, had shown that the owners of the passports had been the unwitting and innocent victims of official identity fraud.

"Given that this was a very sophisticated operation, in which high-quality forgeries were made, the Government judges it is highly likely that the forgeries were made by a state intelligence service," he said.

"Taking this together with other inquiries, and the link with Israel established by Soca, we have concluded that there are compelling reasons to believe that Israel was responsible for the misuse of the British passports.

"The Government takes this matter extremely seriously. Such misuse of British passports is intolerable... I have asked that a member of the embassy of Israel be withdrawn, and this is taking place."

Mr Miliband did not identify the expelled diplomat nor identify them as an intelligence officer, but sources told The Times that it the senior Mossad representative at the Israeli Embassy had been told to leave.

Israel said it regretted the British move. “The relationship between Israel and Britain is mutually important. We therefore regret the British decision,” said Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry.

While the government was measured in its response to the new diplomatic crisis erupting with the UK, MPs from the far right were quick to denounce the British as “dogs” who were not to be trusted.

"I think the British are behaving hypocritically and I don't want to offend dogs on this issue, since some dogs are utterly loyal," MK Aryeh Eldad, of the National Union, an ultra-nationalist pro-settler party, told Sky News. "Who are they to judge us on the war on terror?"

Mr Eldad called for a tit-for-tat expulsion of a senior British diplomat, but Israeli officials said such a move was out of the question.

Another National Union MP, Michael Ben-Ari, added, "The British may be dogs, but they are not loyal to us, but rather to an anti-Semitic system, and Israeli diplomacy partially plays into their hands. This is anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism".

Other, more centrist MPs said however that Israel’s policy of refusing to respond to such accusations had served it well and allowed it to weather the diplomatic storm that erupted when Dubai police accused Mossad of killing the Hamas leader.

"I believe keeping silent was a good policy at the height of the Dubai crisis, and certainly it is now, when it is nearly behind us," said Tzahi Hanegbi, a member of the opposition Kadima Party who chairs the parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee.

Mr Al-Mabhouh, a founding member of the militant group, was murdered in a Dubai hotel room on January 19. Results of a toxicology report show that he was injected with a fast-acting sedative before being suffocated.

His killers fled the country within hours, some flying to Hong Kong, South Africa and the United States. They are all now believed to be back in Israel.

The Mossad hit squad also used forged German, French and Australian passports, prompting a major diplomatic row with the European Union. Mr Miliband said that he had spoken in the past 24 hours with the foreign ministers of those other countries.

Today's expulsion comes as Israel tries to control a slump in relations with the United States prompted by Israel's decision to announce the construction of 1,600 new homes in Arab east Jerusalem during a visit earlier this month by Joe Biden, the US Vice-President.

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, was to meet President Obama in the White House today, but has already made clear that the settlements would go ahead.

Mr Miliband told MPs that he had demanded, and received, an assurance from Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli Foreign Minister, that Israel would never again be party to a similar abuse.

As the Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, noted in his reply, however, the then Israeli Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, gave Geoffrey Howe a similar assurance in 1987 after a similar row over forged UK passports. "It would seem that thoese assurances have not been upheld," he said.

Mr Miliband said 11 of the 12 British victims had now been given biometric passports which would be harder to counterfeit. He also said the Foreign Office’s travel advice for Israel would be amended to highlight the risk of papers being cloned, and how it can be minimised.

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