EU-Israel relations in spotlight over spy affair
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Official anger
The issue will be a hot topic when European foreign ministers gather in Brussels this week.
British and Irish foreign ministers David Miliband and Michael Martin have told reporters that they will press their Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman, when he flies into Belgium for the European parley. Martin also said he will raise the issue for debate with his European peers.
While the story is great for the public with its espionage and international intrigue, former Israeli diplomat to Paris and Brussels Freddy Eytan believes the brouhaha is outweighed by other, more pressing shared interests between Israel and Europe.
"All European states, and especially those who are NATO members and fighting in Afghanistan against the Taliban, have a common goal with Israel. The same can be said for the Iranian issue," Eytan said on Sunday.
Rather than criticism, there should be close cooperation on such issues, he added. That cooperation clearly exists and there is no reason why one incident should blow that relationship off course.
One possibility is that the public condemnation of the killing, coupled with the assumption that Israel was behind the plot, is a case where Western leaders have to be seen to do the right thing, said Eytan.
What next
All eyes are now on Dubai, waiting to see if the police there will produce any more evidence. So far the Gulf Arab emirate has said it is 99-percent sure that Israel was responsible for al- Mabhouh's death.
However, because the alleged killers successfully escaped, it will be extremely difficult to prove beyond all doubt that it was indeed a Mossad operation.
This lack of certainty leaves people scratching their heads when it comes to what to do next.
"There is no dogma for handling matters such as this, no fixed rules of practice. Does one tell the full truth, half the truth, lie brazenly?" said the editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post, David Horovitz.
"Everything is a function of the particular circumstance, the nature of relationships, other areas of cooperation, internal politics -- these and a host of other factors," he said.
While the affair is deeply embarrassing and frustrating for London, Dublin, Paris and Berlin, the truth is that the intelligence agencies of Europe do work extremely closely with the Mossad, according to local analysts.
Intel from Israel has reportedly lead to the prevention of terror attacks around the world and European intelligence community heads hold regular meetings with their Israeli colleagues as they update one another on developments and new technologies.
It was perhaps calculated by the Mossad and Israeli government that European countries value their intelligence relationship with Israel so much that Israel could take the liberty of "borrowing" the identities of European nationals with no major harm coming to its relations with European states.
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