Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh was a founder of terror group Hamas

On January 19th, 2010, Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas military commander and founder of its Izz ad-Din al-Qassam military branch of the terrorist organization was drugged and suffocated in his hotel room just a few short hours after his arrival the Emirati city of Dubai. Initially, a Dubai police report blamed his assassination on a “professional criminal gang” that fled before the body was discovered only a day later.

Al-Mabhouh was personally responsible for arming Hamas with Iranian weapons, along with numerous terrorist attacks including the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers back in the 80s.

In the official investigations, the Dubai security establishment would blame Mossad for the assassination, marking more than two dozen people traveling on forged British, Irish, Australian, French, and German passports as being involved in the killing. It is mentioned in the report that six of those passports were in the name of Israelis who hold dual citizenship.

It is worth noting that this assassination took place close to a decade before the Abraham Accords, in which the UAE normalized relations with Israel. However, some speculate that the UAE authorities were willing to cooperate with Mossad, the alleged killers, due to the smooth process in which the assumed planned operation took place.

Israel rarely comments on any Mossad activity, let alone an alleged assassination. That being said, they are widely seen as responsible for Al-Mabhouh’s death. Even within Israeli media, Yedioth Ahronoth mentioned in their article regarding the case that “The Israeli government does not have to answer the question of whether Mossad agents were the ones who killed the Hamas man Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai."

The smiles of the government ministers when they left the weekly meeting on Sunday said it all. Indeed, one can feel satisfaction. The intelligence was reliable and accurate and the execution was flawless. Although Al-Mabhouh knew he was on the radar of Israeli intelligence and took strict precautions, the executors managed to reach him.

Nevertheless, the alleged Mossad agents who executed the mission were criticized by some within Israel for what they claimed was a sloppy job in covering up all the possible links connecting the operation to Israel.

While Al-Mabhouh had many enemies, including the entire Fatah terrorist organization which had been internally fighting with Hamas for years, and the Hashemite Kingdom where he was a wanted man; he was considered to be a particular target of the Israeli government.

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