The international repercussions of the Israeli Mossad's bungled attempt to assassinate a Hamas leader in Amman last week are widening day by day. Having already antagonised King Hussein, its best Arab ally, by sending assassins to his capital city, Israel is now facing splintering relations with Canada, for having equipped the incompetent hitmen with Canadian passports.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman yesterday expressed "regret" at Canada's decision to recall its ambassador from Tel Aviv.
That Ottawa has taken so rare and harsh a diplomatic step underlines the degree of anger over the Israelis' behaviour, and also reflects a history of awkwardness over precisely this issue.
Israel is understood to have equipped its secret agents with Canadian passports in the past, having somehow apparently acquired a large number of blank Canadian passports, and is said to have explicitly promised the Canadians as far back as the early 1980s to refrain from the practice.
The two Mossad men captured in Amman after the failed attack were using passports in the names of Barry Beads and Shawn Kendall.
There is a Canadian named Shawn Kendall living in Jerusalem; he told Canadian TV this week that he was "an innocent victim in some screwed-up situation, and I would like it to go away".
Of even greater concern for Israel than the damage to ties with Canada, or even with Jordan, is the boost that the failed operation is giving Hamas.
In an effort at damage limitation, Israel on Wednesday freed the Hamas spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a move that will further invigorate an organisation that is already growing in popularity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The sight of Mr Yasser Arafat and King Hussein paying homage at the sheikh's Amman hospital bedside this week will provide new international legitimacy to the militant Islamic group.
This is not the first time that Israeli shortsightedness has boomeranged to the benefit of Hamas.
Israel initially encouraged the establishment of an Islamic opposition movement in Gaza in the 1980s, as a counterpoint to the then-reviled Mr Arafat.
And it gave Hamas a platform for world sympathy and the opportunity for a year's intensive bonding when, in a misguided late 1992 attempt to smash the organisation, it deported hundreds of Hamas leaders to a barren south Lebanon hillside for a year.
Mr Khaled Mashaal, the Hamas official in Amman who survived the assassination attempt on September 25th, gave a press conference yesterday decrying Israel's "state terrorism". He insisted that he had played no role in organising Hamas suicide attacks on Israeli targets.
Of this Mr Mashaal was certain: the Mossad's humiliating failure to kill him, and the resulting embarrassment and humiliation for Israel, had only reinforced his commitment to the Hamas struggle against Israel, and would give the movement new strength.
David Horovitz is managing edi- tor of the Jerusalem Report