The speed of the uproar claiming it was Israel's Mossad that sent Hamas master smuggler Mahmoud al-Mabhouh to his reward should make you suspicious. Mossad, of course, is a convenient rack on which to hang one's hat, but to believe the story requires taking at face value everything the Dubai and British authorities have said-not to mention what Hamas and Fatah have said. There is other interesting and possibly inconvenient information out there. Jumping on Israel shows an alarming lack of imagination by analysts and journalists.
Why accept that the photos released by the Dubai government are real? How should we account for the fact that the hotel appears to have such good security that every vital element of the hit was captured on camera, but the victim had not one bodyguard?
Are we not supposed to mention the possibility that someone in the British passport office might have searched the database for people living in Israel but holding British passports? None of the people had used their passports recently-who would know that better than a British civil servant who was looking? Given the rifts in British society today is it far fetched that someone could be working for a Middle Eastern faction? Isn't it a lot more likely than a British civil servant breaking the law for the Mossad?
Should we ignore the two Palestinians handed over by Jordan to Dubai in connection with the killing? Both Ahmad Hasnin and Anwar Shekhaiber were closely related to Fatah-one report has them employed in Dubai by security-chief Mohammad Dahlan and receiving salaries from Fatah in Ramallah. Should we be surprised that Fatah eradicated a Hamas rival? There is a nasty civil war going among the Palestinians for future control.
Hamas, of course, claims that Fatah collaborated with Israel to do the job. And we believe them because...? Read Khalid Abu Toameh's fascinating "Fatahgate" to better understand the Palestinian obsession with the "Israel conspiracy" as a means of inculcating hatred of Israel in the population and absolving Palestinian leadership of responsibility for its inability or unwillingness to improve day-to-day life and make plans for the future.
Or consider the possibility that it was a Hamas hit on Hamas. Al-Mabhouh's itinerary was known to someone down to the most intimate detail and he had no security. Who better than one of his own? Such operations are well known to Hamas, which is not only fighting Fatah for the West Bank, but is also fighting an insurgency in Gaza against people who claim to be aligned with al Qaeda-but maybe they're just Hamas people that other Hamas people don't like.
What is the role of the credit cards apparently issued by U.S. financial institutions and allegedly used to purchase airline tickets and other props in the plot? Who got them and where are their sympathies? They were not issued to the Israelis whose passport numbers were appropriated, so who was in the middle?
To be clear, the world is better without some people in it. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is one of those people. But whodunit remains a mystery.