With the controversy over the assassination of the Hamas leader Mahmoud al Mabouh still making international news, questions about the passports used by those suspected of committing the murder and how they obtained them have been at the centre of a diplomatic tussle. Is this yet another outcrop of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as some European officials have posited, or is it part of a far more significant security challenge that European, and indeed all governments, must address?
The number of passports used by those suspected of carrying out the murder and the scale of their operation reveals a level of sophistication and organisation possessed by only a few intelligence agencies. Indeed, it appears clearer by the day that Israel and its spy agency Mossad was behind it. But the extent of the fraud also reveals the extent of the passport system's vulnerability. While the interest of the international press in the assassination plot will subside, any attention or urgency it brings to addressing gaps in passport security must not.
Since September 11 new technologies have been added to the passports of many nations, including biometric chips unique to the passport holder, making them far more difficult to forge or "clone". But many British, Irish, French and German passports - those used by the suspects in the Hamas murder to travel to the UAE - do not yet carry the most technologically advanced features. Even the technologies touted as the best defence against those seeking to criminally manipulate travel documents also appear to be vulnerable. In 2008, in response to the theft of 3,000 empty British passports, The Times of London showed how even passports with the latest generation of safeguards could be doctored.
In recent days the British government's expression of outrage concerning the abuse of their passports has been less full-throated than one might have expected. This provides no indication in itself that the British had prior knowledge of the plot as some have argued. Still, a share of the British government's outrage should also be directed internally. Israel's wilful violation of another nation's sovereignty to commit a murder deserves all the indignation it garners. But that so many passports have been used fraudulently is not just a matter of national shame, it is a matter of global security. There are many questions that remain. What is abundantly clear, however, is that the assassination plot is as much a European problem now as a Middle Eastern one.