Although Israel has not yet assumed responsibility for the January 20 assassination of Hamas chief Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in Dubai, all fingers are pointed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The story reminds me of the attempted assassination of Khalid Mesha'al on the streets of Amman in September 1997, when Mossad agents disguised as Canadian tourists sprayed a lethal nerve toxin behind his ear, only to be captured by the Hamas leader's bodyguards. King Hussain of Jordan famously asked Israel for an antidote, a demand that was echoed by then U.S. president Bill Clinton.

When that was granted, King Hussain released the two Mossad agents in exchange for the release of Hamas founder Shaikh Ahmad Yassin, who was in an Israeli jail. In addition to the similarity of technique -- the fact that the attacks took place on neutral territory -- the story carries a striking parallel since the man to have ordered Mesha'al's elimination was none other than Netanyahu himself.
Assassinations are nothing new for Israel, and as is the case with any crime, investigators are required to “round up all the usual suspects.” During the 1970s and 1980s, the Israelis relied on hit squads, gunning down Palestinian leaders in different corners of the globe. Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official Mahmoud Hamshari, for example, was killed in Paris in 1972, while Ali Hassan Salama was killed by a car bomb in Beirut in 1979. In April 1973, now Defence Minister Ehud Barak famously landed on a beach in Beirut with a hit squad, disguised as a brunette, killing Mohammad Yousuf Al Najjar, Kamal Adwan, the PLO's chief of operations, and Kamal Nasser, a poet. The Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al Ali was shot in the face and mortally wounded, which led to his death at a London hospital in July 1987. Top Fatah official Abu Jihad was murdered, shot multiple times by an Israeli hit squad in Tunis in 1988. Hamas leader Abdul Aziz Al Rantisi was blown apart by an Apache helicopter in April 2004, less than a month after Israel killed Shaikh Yassin while he was being wheeled out of a mosque in Palestine. Yasser Arafat himself was widely believed to have been poisoned when he died of unknown causes at a hospital in Paris in November 2004.
We have every reason to believe that Israel was behind the recent murder in Dubai because its top officials, Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres and Barak, were all responsible, one way or another, for the assassinations of many prominent Palestinians.
The only regional player capable of applying the necessary pressure to Israel to end this prolonged madness and return to the negotiating table is U.S. President Barack Obama. Now is the time for such pressure, given Hamas' declared desire (at least, prior to the assassination of Al Mabhouh) to sit down and talk with Israel, through U.S. mediation, accepting the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 and the 1967 borders of Israel. Assassinations will only result in a backlash, prompting Hamas to undertake a vicious war with Israel, as promised last week by Mesha'al.
Track record
Obama is hampered by an uncompromising Netanyahu and a troublesome U.S. Congress, causing all his promises made in the June 2009 speech in Cairo to vanish into thin air. Nevertheless, the U.S. has proven that when it wants to it can take a tough stance against Israel. In 1956, it sponsored a UN resolution criticizing Israel for a December 1955 raid on Lake Tiberias, during the administration of Dwight Eisenhower. More recently, when the Persian Gulf War broke out in January 1991, George H.W. Bush made sure that Israel kept out of the conflict in order to avoid alienating Syria, and forced Israel to practice self-restraint when Saddam Hussain showered the Israeli capital with Scud missiles. Annoyed by a remark made by then Israeli finance minister Yitzhak Modai, who claimed that Washington would have to pay Israel $2 billion (Dh7.3 billion) in compensation for the Scud attacks, Bush cancelled a $400 million (Dh1.4 billion) housing development loan, promised earlier to then Israeli housing minister Ariel Sharon. The money had been earmarked to settle Jewish immigrants coming from the former Soviet Union in the West Bank and Gaza. Bush remarked that he was “one lonely guy fighting powerful political forces that amounted to something like a thousand lobbyists.”
Bush's stance triggered the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991, muscling then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin into attending, against his own wish. Theoretically, a similar approach by Obama could get Netanyahu to return to the peace talks — perhaps a Madrid II — sponsored by the U.S. and Turkey. Of course it would need to be followed by concrete action by the U.S., and a steady campaign to get all Arab states involved in such an international conference. The keys, however, would be in the hands of Netanyahu and Obama. Unless such an approach is taken, however, nothing but assassinations, blood and vengeance will prevail in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Such an argument only applies, however, if Israel is really interested in peace, not if it is searching for a pretext to go to war in Gaza — and actually wants Hamas to take revenge for the killing of Al Mabhouh.
Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine.
(Source: Gulf News)