A three-man committee appointed by the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, to investigate last September's botched Mossad assassination attempt on a Hamas leader in Amman has not merely exempted Mr Netanyahu from all criticism for the foul-up, but praised his "appropriate handling" of the operation, according to leaks from the committee's report.
The committee is, however, highly critical of the head of the Mossad, Mr Danny Yatom, blaming him and others in the intelligence service for the amateurish planning of the September 26th attack on Mr Khaled Mashaal, the head of the Hamas political bureau in Jordan. The attempt on Mr Mashaal's life was intended to involve two Mossad agents approaching him outside his Amman office, injecting him with a slow-working poison while apparently bumping into him accidentally, and making their escape undetected. In the event, the assassins were spotted by Mr Mashaal's bodyguard as they approached and chased by him after they had unleashed the poison. They were eventually caught by the Jordanian security forces and jailed.
As part of a package deal to secure their return to Israel and mollify an enraged King Hussein, the country's warmest Arab ally, Mr Netanyahu was forced to provide the medical expertise to save Mr Mashaal's life and to release from jail the Hamas spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Despite the fact that the assassination attempt involved the use of a poison, that Mr Mashaal had not previously been cited as an orchestrator of anti-Israeli violence and that the hit took place in broad daylight on the streets of a friendly neighbouring capital, the committee is understood to raise no objections to the method, target or venue. Instead, it highlights such astounding operational lapses as the planners' failure to establish whether Mr Mashaal used a bodyguard, to organise alternative escape routes or to conduct appropriate practice runs.