Mastermind behind Palestinian assassinations appointed Israeli spy chief

Israel on Monday appointed an officer said to have masterminded the assassinations of top Palestinian figures as head of its Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency.

A statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said a committee on senior civil service appointments endorsed his nomination of current Shin Bet deputy head Nadav Argaman to the top post.

He will succeed incumbent chief Yoram Cohen, whose term ends in May, as director of the agency, which is Israel's equivalent of the US FBI or Britain's MI5.

Israeli news site Ynet said that Argaman "was responsible for the assassination of one of the top Gaza targets, 'the Engineer' Yahya Ayyash, and as the deputy director, he led the operation to assassinate Hamas military chief Ahmed Jaabari".

Hamas bomb expert Ayash was killed in 1996 in Gaza by a mobile telephone rigged with explosives by Israeli agents.

Jaabari, deputy head of Hamas's military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in 2012 when an Israeli missile targeted his car on a Gaza street.

Israel has regularly used assassinations against leaders of Palestinian groups both inside occupied Palestinian territories and abroad.

Last month, Omar Nayef Zayed, an escaped political prisoner who was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was found dead in the Palestinian embassy in the Bulgarian capital Sofia.

The PFLP accused Israeli intelligence of killing Zayed but also held the Palestinian Authority and its embassy in Bulgaria responsible for failing to protect him.

In January 2010, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, co-founder of Hamas' al-Qassam Brigades, was assassinated in a Dubai hotel in a daring Israeli intelligence operation.

Dubai police identified at least 12 suspected Israeli agents who had arrived in the Gulf city on forged European passports to carry out the hit job.

Argaman has also served as the Shin Bet's representative in Washington, liaising with the FBI and coordinating joint US-Israeli operations the Jerusalem Post reported.