O Jerusalem: Thy name is intrigue!

Mashal, political chief of the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement Hamas, was the first of five Mossad targets, Yatom told the committee, according to the television report on Monday. Netanyahu, along with defence minister Itzhak Mordechai and the domestic intelligence chief, Ami Ayalon, took the decision, Yatom said.

Yatom himself said he preferred another target on another continent and was only told by telephone of the decision to choose Mashal, it was reported.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to be the hotbed of intrigue and conspiracy. The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, two years ago, seemed like an open-and-shut case. A confessed killer, dozens of eyewitnesses, and an amateur cameraman who captured the entire event on film.

That hasn’t stopped conspiracy theories, mostly involving Israel’s internal security agency Shin Bet, from spreading even two years after the event.The right-wing Likud government and an inquiry commission have ruled out such conspiracy notions, and they are mainly promoted by a right-wing fringe. Rabin was the leader of Labour party.

But the theories continue to crop up as the anniversary of the 1995 shooting approaches today.

One theory, printed in a newspaper on Sunday, was raised in the cabinet, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would order an investigation into the relationship between the Shin Bet and Avishai Raviv, a friend of Rabin assassin Yigal Amir.

Public security minister Avigdor Kahalani joined calls for an investigation of Raviv’s role, saying yesterday that there were “a lot of unanswered questions” concerning Rabin’s assassination.

Most of the conspiracy theories rest on the assumption that the Shin Bet knew in advance that Amir, a Jewish extremist, planned to kill Rabin to stop the peace process.