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An unnamed Israeli intelligence operative will be expelled from Australia in retaliation for the Jewish state’s use of forged Australian passports to assassinate a Hamas leader in Dubai in February.
The forgeries are believed to be the work of Mossad, but there certainly won’t be any passports where the expelled agent is going: the airport.
Under the arcane rules of the Vienna Convention, the agent may contest his expulsion by claiming “diplomatic immunity” in a South African accent. Australia will then have 30 days to declare that “it’s just been revoked”.
When the story first broke in February, Canberra had welcomed the news that four Australians were wanted in connection with a crime overseas that didn’t involve smuggling drugs or stealing a beer coaster.
For its part, Israel denied it had created passports with the images of its agents and the names of Joshua Bruce, Nicole McCabe, Adam Korman and Joshua Krycer; claiming that they were just “really bad photos”.
Despite criticism, Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith isn’t backing down from his decision to expel the agent, telling The Daily Grind that the only way the Israeli man going to avoid the flight home is if he can produce documents proving he’s an Australian citizen or something.
Israel has struggled in recent years to shake off its bad-boy image in the international community, with some of the younger countries often approaching it to score fake IDs.
An apologetic Israeli spokesman told The Daily Grind that in their country’s rush to assassinate one of its enemies, it had forgotten what was really important: keeping this one guy at some embassy in some other country.
Israel's flag may have been smuggled into Dubai by adding a fake union jack and some additional stars.
