Gordon Brown's government has decided to expel an Israeli diplomat, accusing an "Israeli security service" of responsibility for "cloning 15 British passports" used by the suspected assassins of Hamas arms facilitator Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai on Jan. 19. Foreign secretary David Miliband will deliver a statement to parliament later Tuesday, March 23, after summoning ambassador Ron Proser to the foreign office.
London admits to having no proof of Israel's complicity in the operation - or even which security arm carried out the forgery. All it claims is "evidence" that the passports were cloned when British passport-holders passed through airports on their way to Israel, with officials taking them away for "checks" of around 20 minutes. 
DEBKAfile's intelligence sources note: Fixing the blame on Israel is a deliberately unfriendly British act in keeping with its overall biased Middle East policies, and typically an accusation that is implied rather than stated and therefore damning by suggestion in the absence of proof.
According to our sources, the cloning of the passports could have taken place in any airport in the world by any other unnamed "security service." 
Furthermore, the British consulate in Jerusalem is staffed entirely by Palestinians who could easily have got hold of the passports held by Britons or dual citizens in Israel and used them for their own purposes. 
Prime minister Brown poses as a great friend of Israel. Yet his government chose to publish embarrassing insinuations against Israel on the very day its prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, was on his way to the White House for a pretty important meeting with US president Barack Obama, and at a time when Israel had its hands full fending off international pressure on construction in Jerusalem. 
It should be noted in this regard that in the UK, any private individual can decide a foreign visitor is a war criminal and file an arrest warrant against him or her in a British court. No foreign nationals have ever been targeted for this quirky British custom except Israelis.  For this reason, Israel's opposition leader Tzipi Livni cancelled a visit to London, as have a number of top Israeli officers after receiving warnings they faced summary arrest at Heathrow airport. 
Brown and Miliband have repeatedly promised to amend the law which seriously embitters ties which British politicians persists in calling friendly. However, in January, minister of justice Jack Straw stepped in to postpone the requisite legislation indefinitely. Neither the prime minister nor foreign secretary demurred.

DEBKAfile's diplomatic sources expect the Israeli government to make appropriate response to London's new harassment and go beyond an expression of regret to a tit-for-tat declaration of a British diplomat posted in Tel Aviv persona not grata.