Tony Abbott calls for restraint on Israel

TONY Abbott has called on the Rudd government not to expel an Israeli diplomat over allegations the Israeli secret service, Mossad, used forged Australian passports in the assassination of a Hamas terrorist in Dubai.

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was found dead in his hotel room in Dubai on January 20 this year. The Dubai authorities later established he had been murdered.

The Opposition Leader wants the Rudd government to ignore the precedent set by Gordon Brown's government in London, which expelled an Israeli diplomat as punishment for the use of British passports in the Dubai killing.

While stressing that he did not condone the misuse of Australian passports, and while it is not yet known whether Israel was involved in the assassination, Mr Abbott pleaded for understanding for the Jewish state.

"We can never forget that Israel is a country under existential threat in a way Australians find difficult to understand," Mr Abbott told The Weekend Australian. "It's also the only pluralist democracy in the Middle East.

"We have to understand that Israel sometimes has to do something which mercifully other countries are spared the necessity of doing. It strikes me that it would be an overreaction to expel an Israeli diplomat."

The Rudd government is in the midst of considering how it will handle a report on the passports affair from the Australian Federal Police. The AFP group sent to Israel to investigate whether Mossad was involved in the misuse of Australian passports left Israel to return to Australia on March 8. Its report has not been finalised.

The British government gave Canberra a copy of its report, which found it "highly likely" that Israel was involved in the misuse of British passports.

Kevin Rudd told ABC radio yesterday that the government had yet to make up its mind on how it would react to the AFP report. The Prime Minister said: "It's currently with the Australian Federal Police and others . . . those investigations are ongoing."

Sources have also told The Weekend Australian that Australian intelligence agencies use forged passports in their clandestine work.

Analysts believe the agency most likely to do this is the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, which runs secret operations in numerous countries.

Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop told The Weekend Australian: "It would be naive in the extreme to believe a foreign power never used a forged passport. The Australian government would have to be very careful to ensure that Australian agencies never used forged passports."

She said expelling an Israeli diplomat would be an "extreme step" and that she would "not want to see Kevin Rudd politicise this case in an election year".

Sources told The Weekend Australian that the Rudd government was having a vigorous internal debate about what action, if any, to take.

Some members of the government believe that it has already done enough to vent its anger with the Israelis.

Unless the AFP report comes up with some definitive proof of Israeli culpability that was not in the British report, these people believe the government's strong statements, the calling in of the Israeli ambassador, Yuval Rotem, for a dressing-down, and the effective subsequent isolation of the Israeli diplomatic mission in Canberra, along with a changed Australian vote concerning Israel at the UN, constitutes more than enough action on Australia's part.

This is especially so, in this group's view, given the anti-Israel hysteria that is building as a result of the spat between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israeli building projects in East Jerusalem.

Others in the government prefer aligning more closely with the Gordon Brown strategy and with Mr Obama's evident anger towards Israel.

Mr Rudd said there would be "a full and comprehensive statement from the government" once the AFP investigation had been completed. He also said he and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith were not satisfied with the answers they had received from the Israeli government.

Another option government strategists are believed to be examining is asking the Israelis for a public assurance that no Australian passport will be misused in the future. Israel's government could give this assurance without admitting its involvement in Dubai.

The French, German and Irish governments, whose passports were also misused in Dubai, have not expelled any Israeli diplomats.

Analysts believe the Brown government may have been motivated by a desire to move domestic scandals out of the news agenda and to seek the votes of anti-Israeli Britons in the forthcoming British election.