Occupied Jerusalem: The chief of Israel’s spy agency has ruled out resigning over the assassination of top Hamas commander Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in Dubai, an aide close to the official said on Thursday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also unlikely to ask Mossad chief Meir Dagan to step down, the aide said.
While Israel has declined to comment on the January 20 murder of the Hamas commander, Dubai Police have released details of the suspected killers, including several who had copied the European passports of actual immigrants to Israel.
Discerning a Mossad modus operandi and predicting a stink over the trans-national identity thefts, some Israeli pundits suggested Dagan would be forced to step down – like predecessor Danny Yatom in 1997 after a botched assassination attempt of another Hamas top official, Khalid Mesha’al, in Jordan. But the aide, who asked not to be identified, told reporters that Dagan “has no intention of quitting before his tenure is completed."
Resignation would be tantamount to taking responsibility, the aide said. Dagan, a former general, was appointed in 2002 with a mandate to take the fight to Israel’s enemies abroad. He won plaudits from successive prime ministers and an unusually long eight-year term.
The Mossad chief's success in other and ongoing operations against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran would outweigh any desire by Netanyahu to have him fall on his sword, said the aide, who also hails from Israel's intelligence community, according to Reuters.
The source claimed that Mossad would instead “quietly lobby” counterpart spy agencies in Britain, Ireland, Germany and France - the countries whose passports were used for the Dubai mission – to tone down their governments’ scrutiny on Israel.
Dagan, 64, is scheduled to retire at the end of the year.
