REPORTER: Sophie McNeill
The assassination of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in January suddenly thrust the murky world of Israeli espionage into the headlines. Despite a prolonged international outcry, Israel has never confirmed it was behind the murder.
REPORTER: What does the Israeli Government do when the whole world is saying that Israel was behind this assassination? What position does that put the Israeli Government in?
ANDY DAVID, ISREAL’S MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS: Well, the government will continue to do what it needs to do.
I'm on my way to the Hezbollah stronghold of Nabatieh in South Lebanon. It's the kind of town that proudly displays photos of locals who have died fighting Israel. The only reason I'm allowed to film is because we're being closely watched by a minder from Lebanese military intelligence. Here even the most mundane-looking streets hold dark secrets.
Nabatieh is on high alert - partly because of this car dealership and garage. For over 15 years, it was owned and run by local Marwan Fakiyeh but late last year he was arrested and charged with spying for Israel. Fakiyeh's neighbour, Hasab, was shocked by the revelation.
HASAB, NEIGHBOUR (Translation): He would walk by and say “Good morning, good afternoon”. Then he ends up being a spy – I considered him a neighbour – even a brother. We are being harmed and he ends up being a spy! He would swear at Jews – at the planes for what they are doing – scaring people. And he is an agent – he is bringing them here!
Fakiyeh reportedly confessed to hiding tracking devices inside cars he sold or repaired for Hezbollah. Hassan Illeik is an investigative reporter with 'Al-Akhbar' newspaper in Beirut. He's been following the story closely.
HASSAN ILLEIK, REPORTER (Translation): Marwan was like any person from Nabatieh, he has relatives in Hezbollah, in the resistance. He has people close to him in the resistance, he has neighbours in the resistance.
DR RONEN BERGMAN, INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: It has been going on secretly, covertly.
For Israel, disrupting what the Lebanese call the 'resistance' is a top priority. Dr Ronen Bergman is one of Israel's leading intelligence analysts.
DR RONEN BERGMAN: Israel, especially since 2002-2003, with Mossad under the command of Major Meir Dagan, is investing major efforts, vast resources, into the attempts to penetrate what is termed by Mossad as the 'radical front', which is combined of Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Syria and Iran. Understanding what the radical front is up to - trying to disrupt its efforts against Israel, and coming up with a new initiative in order to try and destroy or at least delay the Iranian nuclear project.
While Israel is determined to build its spy network, Lebanon is equally committed to tearing it down. Over the past year and a half, Lebanese intelligence services say they've arrested more than 80 people working as Israeli spies. Some have already been tried and sentenced to death. This is how the arrest of one important operative, Ali al-Jarrah, was reported on Lebanese TV.
TELEVISION REPORT (Translation): Lebanese troops surrounded the family house of Ali Marj, they took away his brother Youssef, a truck driver and confiscated a Pajero owned by Ali. Sources say the confiscated vehicle was used for surveillance of people, sites and convoys on the Damascus road.
HASSAN ILLEIK (Translation): He worked in central Bekaa, on the Beirut-Damascus road. The Masnaa area is on the Syrian border, so in practice this man had access to the supply routes of arms to the resistance and to the backyard of the resistance movement.
Cracking the Israeli spy network has revealed many secrets, including here in the ancient port of Byblos, just an hour north of Beirut. It's a favourite haunt with tourists. All seems normal by day, but by night this harbour was reportedly used by Israeli intelligence officers as a meeting point to talk with their spies.
ANDY DAVID: Intelligence is part of any country's information. It helps prevent, I would say, conflicts. When you know what you need to know, it helps you prevent some of the conflicts. That's the reason why we are trying to do that.
But for the Lebanese, catching Israeli spies is seen to greatly improve their security and they are keen to publicise any success. This press conference was held to reveal equipment the authorities claim to have confiscated from spies working for Israel.
MAN (Translation): The first device is in the form of a radio, it is internal structure is ordinary and does not contain any unusual components not found in ordinary radio sets. But it actually contains sophisticated technology for receiving and transmitting coded messages via short wave.
ALISTAIR CROOKE: I think it's very significant. It really has been an enormous unravelling if you like, of what seems to be not just one network, but several.
Alistair Crooke spent over two decades as a MI6 British intelligence operative and diplomat in the Middle East. He lives in Beirut.
ALISTAIR CROOKE: You can have new exercises for the army. You can do new training. You can give them new equipment, but putting back that sort of intelligence network on the ground, as I say, can take 5, 10 years. It's not easy.
REPORTER: There was so much media attention as to what happened in Dubai, but in a way, is what happened here in Lebanon, is it as damaging as what happened in Dubai or perhaps even more damaging?
ALISTAIR CROOKE: Oh, more damaging - much more damaging. Because there may soon be easily some form of conflict here in Lebanon.
And it's not just the former spy who thinks there may soon be another war here.
BRIGADIER GENERAL AMIN HOTAIT, FORMER LEBANESE ARMY, (Translation): But right now the eyes and ears that Israel needs in its next war are fewer than they had in 2006, because these networks have been exposed.
Former Lebanese Army Brigadier General Amin Hotait oversaw Israel's withdrawal from South Lebanon a decade ago.
BRIGADIER GENERAL AMIN HOTAIT (Translation): This will influence the outcome of the military process and also, in one way or another, Israel’s boldness in deciding to put troops on the ground and go to war. We believe here in Lebanon that by uncovering the Israeli spies, this either will delay the war or prevent it completely.
Late last year, another blow was struck in this deadly contest. On 23 December a parcel delivered to the Hamas office in Beirut exploded, killing two of the organisation's members. It may have been intended for this man, Osama Hamdan, the Hamas leader in Beirut. He says he's on an Israeli hit list.
OSAMA HAMDAN, HAMAS LEADER: It's not a secret we are targeted by the Israelis, by the names, not in general. Our names are on the list. At least mine is one of the list, so anything can be.
DR RONEN BERGMAN: The issue of using targeted assassination is very complex. There are moral issues, ethical issues and of course, effectiveness issues. Is it worth it? And we should judge every case by its own. I can give you a few cases when Israel assassinated people, outside Israel, in the territories, in Europe, in Arab countries, when it had major positive effect from the point of view of Israel.
I leave Lebanon and head over the border to Syria. Long accused by Israel and the West as a supporter of the terror groups that Mossad has been busy hunting. Hezbollah's military commander, Imad Mughniyeh, was assassinated here in 2008. The killing bore all the hallmarks of a classic Mossad hit. Gordon Thomas is a renowned intelligence expert who's written extensively about the operation.
GORDON THOMAS, AUTHOR: They had been looking for him for years. He was perhaps the most wanted terrorist next to bin Laden. They wanted him desperately.
Mughniyeh had been living a life on the run for years, even undergoing extensive plastic surgery in Europe so he could move around the globe undetected. It was only after Mossad was tipped off with photos of his new look that the Israelis managed to track him down.
GORDON THOMAS: This is the kind of assassination that they really do like, if there is such a thing as liking an assassination. And they put together a team and they got the passports right, not like in Dubai and they had French… They came in one by one into Damascus.
After arriving in the Syrian capital, Thomas says the agents began preparing a car bomb to kill Mughniyeh.
GORDON THOMAS: They planted in the car, in the headrest, a little bomb. Now little bombs are what they specialise in killing you. Not big bombs - just enough to blow your head off.
And on the night of 12 February 2008, they successfully executed the plan.
GORDON THOMAS: They waited in the street, at each corner of the street - one on one corner, one on a third, and one in the car, and they would detonate a bomb with a flick of their phone, and when he arrived 'bang' his head went off, he was gone.
DR FAYSSAL MEKDAD, DEPUTY FOREIGN MINISTER: This is a criminal act. This is a terrorist act
Dr Fayssal Mekdad is Syria's deputy foreign minister.
DR FAYSSAL MEKDAD: Such actions should not be repeated because they contribute to the already explosive situation in the Middle East.
REPORTER: What is the Israeli Government's official position on extrajudicial killing?
ANDY DAVID: Again, our position is not very different than the position of many of the Western world countries. We follow the same laws but in addition we follow the same moral values and we will never do something if it's not for self-protection.
Just six months after Mughniyeh's death, another high-profile figure was assassinated in Syria, this time, in the coastal resort town of Tartous. In the summer of 2008, Brigadier General Mohammed Suleiman, a top Syrian military official, was holidaying here. Said to be one of the president's closest advisers, Suleiman was reportedly in charge of transferring Iranian missiles into Lebanon for Hezbollah. It was to be a fatal assignment. Late one afternoon, on the 1 August 2008, Suleiman was reportedly taking a stroll on this beach when he was shot. The story is that the bullets were fired from a passing boat.
DR RONEN BERGMAN: Israel has a long tradition of not commenting on a huge number of operations that were attributed to Mossad. Now, I can tell you that some of these operations were indeed conducted by Mossad. Some of them were not.
The next battle in this hidden war is occurring in Israel itself. In an Arab town in the north of the country, Palestinians are calling for the release of two of their community members. They were arrested by Israeli intelligence in May and accused of spying for Hezbollah.
JANAN ABDU (Translation): They want to turn this country into a big Guantanamo prison. I'm telling you, all your prisons and detention centres aren't big enough for us all. You can't jail a whole people!
This is Janan Abdu, the wife of Ameer Makhoul, the head of a Palestinian rights organisation, who was one of those arrested. Intelligence officers came at four in the morning to arrest her husband.
JANAN ABDU: They started separating... started separating - three people sit here, started bringing out everything they can. They took Ameer's computer. They took a laptop, which was here. They took two computers from our daughters, from separate rooms. He is a political activist. He is a human rights defender. He don't have to spy. He's just doing what he's doing to say, to speak, to publish his writing.
DR RONEN BERGMAN: This is still partly under court gag, so we can't discuss the actual details of what they are accused of but Israeli intelligence, the Shin Bet domestic security service, is very much concerned with Iranian attempts to recruit spies in Israel.
As the arrests and the 'hits' continue, many questions remain on the issue of state-sponsored assassination.
DR RONEN BERGMAN: If you were in charge of a secret organisation, of the Mossad, and you know that in a house that you cannot approach, which is surrounded by armed forces and in this house people are preparing to send two suicide bombers that you would not be able to stop tomorrow and are going to explode themselves in a bus. And you are completely 100% sure of your intelligence - this is the only way - what would you do?
ALISTAIR CROOKE: Simply killing people that you tick off as the bad men, I mean, this is just not anything to do with intelligence as it's been understood. This is simply a program of political killings in many ways- extrajudicial killings. I mean clearly in terms of, has it set back Hamas? No, it hasn't. They simply get replaced and generally the history is they get replaced by people who are more radical, not less radical.
GEORGE NEGUS: I jotted down what the Israeli Government spokesperson said - and I'm sure that, pressed, their Palestinian counterparts would say exactly the same: "We will never do something" - by which we can presume he meant kill someone - "unless it was for self-protection." That, of course, was in the context of Sophie McNeill asking about so-called 'extrajudicial killing' - a nasty shorthand term for the illegal killing of people you believe might kill you.
Reporter/Camera
SOPHIE MCNEILL
Supervising Producer
GEOFF PARISH
Researcher/Producer
MELANIE MORRISON
Editor
DAVID POTTS
Translations/Subtitling
DR. RIFAT FOUDA
Original Music composed by