Will an (alleged) assassination shatter the Hamas-Israel cease-fire?

http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/29/will_an_alleged_assassination_shatter_the_hamas_israel_cease_fire

Will an (alleged) assassination shatter the Hamas-Israel cease-fire?

Hamas is claiming that one of its leaders, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, was
killed by Israeli operatives in his hotel in Dubai on January 20 and
threatening a response "in the appropriate place and time." The story
is all over the Arab media, in many cases as a red-bannered breaking
news story. Israel does not yet have a comment that I've seen. Hamas
says that UAE authorities are cooperating in the investigation, and
the first reports out of Dubai are that the killers were European and
part of a "professional criminal gang". Whatever the truth of the
incident, the alleged assassination threatens to disrupt the uneasy
ceasefire which has held between Hamas and Israel over the last year,
and to further strain the already dismal prospects of either Fatah-
Hamas reconciliation, attempts to alleviate the suffering of Gaza, or
a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Let's hope that it
doesn't spark a new cycle of violence.

The de facto cease-fire between Hamas and Israel has been no secret.
Israelis have often pointed to these efforts by Hamas to prevent
attacks against Israel over the last year as evidence that Operation
Cast Lead succeeded in establishing deterrence. As Israeli Defense
Minister Ehud Barak recently said, for instance, "The deterrence
achieved during Operation Cast Lead still exists, and it is strong."
Palestinian Authority (Ramallah) Prime Minister Salam al-Fayyad
similarly raised some eyebrows at Davos yesterday by highlighting that
in practice Hamas and the PA agreed on security: "it is clear that
Hamas has been trying to prevent attacks on Israel, it is no secret,
it has been trying to do that, it is not saying it is doing it but it
is doing it.” This argument has been used against Hamas by its Arab
rivals such as Egypt and the PA, who have pointed to the de facto
ceasefire to mock their claims to be "resisting" Israel. Israelis,
including Barak, have argued repeatedly that what rocket fire there
has been from Gaza has been due to the difficulties Hamas has faced in
controlling more radical groups --- not from Hamas itself.

Why would Israel put this de facto ceasefire at risk by an
assassination? First off, it's impossible to say at this point
whether they did --- no evidence has yet been presented to back up
Hamas's claims. Much of the Arab public immediately believed it,
though, as it immediately recalled the botched operation against
Khaled Meshaal in Amman a decade ago, as well as the assassinations
of leading Hamas figures such as Ahmed Yassin and Abd al-Aziz al-
Rentissi in 2004. That doesn't mean that it's true. But since
Hamas has already gone public with the accusation and promised
revenge, it may spark off a dangerous cycle anyway.

What if it's true? There should be questions about the legitimacy and
morality of assassinating one's enemies abroad, one would think. But
that seems unlikely in this day and age, when the United States openly
brags of its Predator strikes, discusses them primarily in terms of
whether or not they "work" as opposed to whether or not they are legal
or morally acceptable, and muses about whether or not to target Anwar
al-Awlaki (the radical Islamist in Yemen who is also an American
citizen). The international norms against such assassinations have
been thoroughly degraded by the Global War on Terror, and the Obama
administration has escalated rather than reined in such measures.

So the real debate is more likely to be about the logic of the
assassination and whether it "works." But it's not obvious what that
would even mean in this context -- it makes little strategic sense.
If Israelis and the PA both acknowledge that Hamas has been
controlling attacks against Israel from Gaza, what is gained by a
provocation such as this? Would it have "worked" if Hamas fails to
respond, demonstrating its impotence? Would it have "worked" if
Hamas does respond, killing innocent Israeli civilians and possibly
triggering another round of horrific violence? Would it have "worked"
if a Hamas retaliation (or even an unfulfilled threat of retaliation)
offers a pretext for maintaining or intensifying the blockade of
Gaza? At this point I'm seeing a blizzard of Arab commentary on the
subject but no real consensus. But smaller things have sparked
disastrous confrontations in the past, and I only hope that this one
does not.

UPDATE: as a friend points out, "it makes no sense" hardly rules it
out. Just looking back at the botched 1997 Israeli assassination
attempt against Khaled Meshaal, as masterfully chronicled in Paul
McGeough's Kill Khaled, is enough to show that. The Meshaal episode,
also authorized by a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, targeted
the rising Hamas leader on the streets of Israel's closest partner in
the Arab world using agents holding foreign (Canadian) passports.
King Hussein was so furious and humiliated that he demanded not only
an antidote to the poison used on Meshaal but also the release of a
number of Hamas leaders from Israeli prisons (including Shaykh Ahmed
Yassin). It would have been difficult to make a sensible case for
that attempt either. So we'll just see how this one unfolds, I'm
afraid.