Britain expelled an Israeli diplomat on Tuesday for the suspected use of a dozen fake British passports in the assassination of a Hamas official in a Dubai hotel earlier this year.

“Such misuse of British passports is intolerable,” the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, said in remarks to the House of Commons. “The fact that this was done by a friendly country only adds insult to injury.”

He called Israel’s actions “completely unacceptable” and said “they must stop.”

The British decision to expel an Israeli diplomat is a new turn in Israel’s recent frictions with its closest Western allies, after a cooling of ties with the United States in the wake of the Netanyahu government’s decision this month to approve new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem.

Mr. Miliband did not identify the Israeli diplomat, but British news reports speculated that he was the London station chief of Mossad, Israel’s overseas spy agency.

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