It is difficult to summon much sympathy for Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the Hamas military commander who was smothered to death in his Dubai hotel room by a mysterious team of tennis-playing assassins.
Before he met his end, the 50-year-old topped the list of Israel's most-wanted terrorists. As one of the founder members of the Izzedine al-Qassem brigades, the military wing of Hamas, he had a well-documented track record of involvement in terrorist activities, from the abduction and murder of two Israeli soldiers in 1989 (which explains why he fled to Syria soon afterwards) to smuggling arms from Iran to Gaza. It is as a result of al-Mabhouh's activities that Hamas today is in possession of a stockpile of Iranian-made missiles that could inflict devastation on Israel.
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