Israel`s
Lethal Weapon Of Choice
By Molly Moore
Palestine Media Center
30 June, 2003
Nazih Abu Sibaa, 35, died
seconds after he opened the trunk of his booby-trapped car. Abdel Rahman
Hamad, 33, was shot dead by a sniper as he sat on his roof reading the
Koran. Mohammad Abayat, 27, was killed when he picked up the receiver
of a pay phone that blew up outside a hospital where he was visiting
his sick mother.
All three men, whose deaths
were described by witnesses and Palestinian officials, were suspected
Palestinian militants marked for assassination -- one of Israel's primary
weapons in its effort to curb suicide bombings and other attacks against
Israelis. These "targeted killings," as they are known here,
were described by Israeli officials two years ago as "rare and
exceptional" measures. But now they are carried out with regularity,
using missiles, bombs, tanks, booby traps and gunfire, and they are
stirring increasing disapproval from the Israeli public.
Their frequency increased
as Palestinian militants sent a wave of suicide bombers to attack Israelis,
intensifying the level of violence in the 33-month-long Palestinian
uprising, in which approximately 2,950 people have been killed.
The number of missions in
which suspected Palestinian militants were tracked and killed by Israel
more than doubled from 35 in 2001 to 72 last year. The toll of civilian
bystanders and others who were not intended targets increased 2 1/2
times during the same period, according to studies of the cases by The
Washington Post, which were based partly on research by two Israeli
human rights groups, B'Tselem and the Public Committee Against Torture
in Israel; and three Palestinian organizations, the Palestinian Society
for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment (known by its
Arabic acronym, LAW), the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group
and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
The figures exclude incidents
that were not targeted killings -- such as gunfights, street fights
or other shootings that appeared to be random -- or in which suspected
militants were killed during general arrests or military operations.
According to the data, Israeli
military forces and undercover operations teams have killed at least
249 Palestinians during targeted attacks since the fall of 2000.
Of that total, 149 were the
targets and 100 were civilians or, in some cases, bodyguards or members
of militant groups who were not the primary targets. Slightly more than
one of every 10 Palestinians who has died in the conflict was killed
during a targeted killing operation, the data show.
"Targeted killing is
not only very valuable," Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, chief of planning
and policy in the Israeli military and one its most senior officers,
said in a recent interview. "If we could not use this method in
areas like Gaza, where we do not control the territory . . . we could
not fight effectively against terrorist groups."
"In 2003, the main weapon
the Israeli army has in its arsenal against terrorism is the assassination
policy," said Michael Sfard, a Tel Aviv attorney representing LAW
and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, which are challenging
the policy as a violation of international law and human rights standards
in a suit now before the Israeli Supreme Court. "Today we execute
people without trial. It's so simple. That's what we're doing. No one
shows evidence to anyone."
'New Rules' of the Conflict
Israel's increased use of
targeted killings, and the civilian deaths that have accompanied them,
has sharpened debate here on a critical question: Should a Jewish state
that describes itself as the only true democracy in the Middle East
refrain from conducting assassinations, or does Palestinian use of suicide
bombers to attack Israelis in cafes and on buses justify extreme measures
to protect Israeli citizens?
"Terrorism has introduced
new rules into the game," said Yaron Ezrahi, a Hebrew University
professor and one of Israel's leading political scientists and philosophers,
"and therefore the situation for a state like Israel, and the United
States, is how to maintain its constitutionality in the face of terror."
Today in Israel, he said,
"what we're seeing is a process of erosion of democratic norms."
Although Israelis have suffered
more than 2 1/2 years of suicide bombings and other attacks, Israeli
society is becoming increasingly opposed to the tactic of assassination.
In a recent public opinion
poll by the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, large numbers of Israelis
who were questioned expressed doubts about both the tactics and the
motives of such operations. A majority of Israelis polled -- 58 percent
-- said the military should at least temporarily discontinue targeted
killings. Two of every five Israelis polled said they believed the government
had used targeted killings to sabotage a new, U.S.-backed peace process.
Israel's policy of targeted
killings has become one of the most divisive issues in the debate over
a U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map." Palestinian
militant leaders have said they will honor a cease-fire agreement with
Israel only if the practice is ended. Israelis have insisted that they
reserve the right to go after militants that they consider imminent
threats if Palestinian security forces don't detain them or prevent
the attack after being advised about it.
The United States, which
last year killed suspected al Qaeda operatives in Yemen using a Hellfire
missile fired from a remote-controlled Predator aircraft, has criticized
Israel's policy of assassinations as "unhelpful" to the peace
effort but has not issued strong condemnations. In deference to Israel's
arguments that assassinations are necessary to prevent terrorist attacks,
the United States reportedly has pushed Israeli officials to limit their
targets to "ticking bombs" -- individuals who can be tied
to impending threats -- though critics argue that such limits are open
to broad interpretation.
History of Assassination
In the spring of 1973, a
group of Israeli commandos guided a speedboat up the Mediterranean coast
and scrambled ashore in Beirut. Their covert mission: to assassinate
three of the Palestine Liberation Organization's top officials in their
downtown apartments.
The leader of the team, Ehud
Barak, commander of Israel's special forces, wore a long, dark wig,
false breasts and women's clothing. He and his men gunned down all three
targets, according to accounts confirmed by Barak, who later became
Israel's prime minister.
Israel's history of assassinations
stretches back decades. In the early 1970s, prominent members of Palestinian
organizations were killed in rocket attacks and car bomb explosions
in Lebanon. Prime Minister Golda Meir authorized hit squads to locate
and kill members of the Black September cell responsible for the kidnapping
and murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Israeli
undercover squads, dressed as Arabs, hunted down suspected militants
in the Palestinian territories during the first uprising, or intifada,
from 1987 to 1993.
In the fall of 2000, as the
second intifada began, Barak was prime minister and authorized security
forces to assassinate Palestinian militants suspected of planning or
conducting attacks against Israelis.
Just before noon on Nov.
9 of that year, Hussein Abayat, a 37-year-old father of four, was driving
his gray Mitsubishi through the West Bank village of Beit Sahur on the
eastern edge of Bethlehem when antitank missiles fired by Israeli gunships
slammed into his car. Neighbors found his charred body melted to the
driver's seat. Two women, Aziza Jubran, 58, and Rahma Hindi, 54, who
had been standing on the roadside, also died, their bodies burned black
by the missiles.
Abayat, identified by Israelis
as an activist with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement
who allegedly organized shooting attacks on the nearby Jewish community
of Gilo, became the first known targeted killing of the current conflict.
After the hit, Barak vowed to "continue with such operations."
As the intifada intensified
under Barak's successor, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the military's
reliance on assassinations and the scope of the targets expanded, buttressed
by advances in intelligence gathering and adaptations of high-technology
military equipment and weaponry.
The Israeli government has
not released official data on targeted killings. In some cases, the
government says Palestinians were killed because Israeli security forces
had to fire in self-defense. Details about evidence gathered by Israel
on suspects, and facts about the decision to assassinate them, usually
remain secret after the attacks.
In carrying out the targeted
killings, Israeli forces have lifted some of their tactics from the
murky world of covert operations and integrated them into the daily
missions of regular troops. Frequently, several types of security units
participate in a single operation: The mission will be directed by Shin
Bet, the country's civilian security agency, with military commandos
providing the muscle and army tanks and air force helicopters supplying
the firepower.
In an example of such a coordinated
hit, three suspected Islamic Jihad militants driving on an isolated
road north of the West Bank city of Jenin last October were ambushed
by eight undercover Israeli operatives, four armored personnel carriers
and three helicopters. Two of the suspects were killed.
Palestinian hospital officials
said one of the men, Wassim Ahmed Sabana, 23, was shot seven times.
Israeli security officials later said intelligence reports indicated
the men were en route to a suicide bombing inside Israel.
Other missions have relied
more on finesse. In 16 known incidents, Israeli operatives or Palestinian
agents cooperating with Israelis have planted explosive devices in telephone
booths, cars and other locations where they were detonated by remote
control, sometimes from unmanned drones or helicopters. Because such
operations are often carried out in secret by security services, Israeli
officials usually deny involvement and attribute the explosions to accidents
caused by Palestinians building or carrying explosive devices that detonated
prematurely.
Military officials said they
used targeted killings when they were unable to arrest the wanted militant,
which officials said was always their first choice. But human rights
officials argue that Israel has made thousands of arrests under difficult
circumstances since the intifada began, challenging the claim that some
targets must be killed rather than arrested. Israeli officials say the
justification for targeted killings is self-defense: "a means to
prevent in-progress and future terrorist attacks that will kill Israeli
civilians," according to court documents recently filed to the
Israeli Supreme Court by the Israeli government in response to the human
rights groups' suit.
Human rights officials argue,
however, that the practice of targeted killings is a denial of due process
in a country that grants its own citizens accused of crimes extensive
judicial rights and does not have a death penalty.
Increasingly, in the past
two years, proposed operations have been screened by military lawyers.
The most important targets are sent to Sharon for approval, according
to civilian and military officials.
"Did we make some mistakes?"
the military's Eiland said. "Yes. Did we sometimes miss the target?
Yes. Did we sometimes cause collateral damage? Yes." But he also
said operations have been delayed or canceled "hundreds of times"
because of concerns over civilian casualties and other factors.
Unintended Victims
Abdel Aziz Rantisi said he
never heard the helicopters coming. He didn't realize a missile had
slammed through the engine block of his car until the blue Mitsubishi
filled with white smoke.
"It took me three seconds
to realize we were being targeted," said Rantisi, 60, one of the
most senior and most strident Gaza leaders of the Islamic Resistance
Movement, or Hamas, "and I started to think, 'How are we going
to survive the second rocket?' "
He leaped out a back door
and his 19-year-old son, Ahmed, who was driving, crawled out a window.
As the car rolled into a nearby intersection, AH-64 Apache gunships
spit five more missiles at it.
Amal Jarosheh, 8, was standing
in the gate leading to her family's house a few feet away when the first
missile punched through the hood of the Rantisi car at 11:50 a.m. on
June 10.
"I gave her some money
to buy candy," said her father, Nimer Jarosheh, 46, a mechanic.
"She never got a chance to eat it."
Rantisi, the target, survived
the operation. But five other people, including Amal, died from their
wounds.
"The thing that makes
me angry is they mean to kill as many people as they can," Rantisi,
still nursing a leg injury from the attack, said in an interview in
Gaza City. "Their assassinations all occur in very crowded areas.
This was one of the most crowded areas of Gaza.
"I'm sure I was monitored
and observed from the time I left my house. They could have tried to
assassinate me in a place that was not crowded and avoided spilling
civilian blood."
About one-third of all the
suspected militants killed in targeted assassinations have been hit
with missiles fired from aircraft and, in one case, a 2,000-pound bomb
dropped by an F-16 fighter plane. But more than two-thirds of all unintended
victims were killed in these airstrikes, making them the most controversial
of the targeted killings.
"Israel fails to apply
the principle of proportionality," said Donatella Rovera, who monitors
Israeli and Palestinian human rights issues for Amnesty International,
the London-based rights group. "So many bystanders have been killed
in pursuit of this policy."
The largest number of fatalities
occurred last July when an Israeli fighter jet dropped a one-ton bomb
on a house in a central Gaza City neighborhood where concrete apartment
buildings are packed together. The target was Salah Shehada, the founder
and leader of Hamas's militant wing in Gaza. He was killed. So were
14 other people, including Shehada's wife.
While the international backlash
over the bombing did not surprise Israeli officials, they were stunned
by the reaction from their own public.
"The bomb in Gaza that
killed 14 innocent people left a very profound impact on Israelis,"
said Ezrahi, the Israeli political scientist. "There is a certain
kind of agonizing over events where there is killing of civilians."
After the attempted assassination
of Rantisi, public opinion responded even more severely, according to
the newspaper poll that showed 40 percent of those questioned believed
the attack was an attempt to disrupt the peace initiative.
Though Israeli officials
defended the Shehada and the Rantisi targetings, both had prompted vociferous
debates within the military and intelligence communities before they
were carried out, according to military officials.
In the case of Shehada, some
officers argued that more precise missiles, rather than a one-ton bomb,
should have been used. But Shehada had escaped a previous assassination
attempt and had shown an ability to outwit Israeli security forces,
according to Eiland. "We didn't know exactly where he would be
inside the house," Eiland said. "If we attacked him with a
helicopter [using a missile], the probability that we would kill him
was considered too low."
The military has not used
an air-dropped bomb in a targeted killing attempt since the Shehada
bombing.
The attempted killing of
Rantisi was also vigorously debated within the government. Many officials,
including one of the country's top military and intelligence officials,
believed it would be too provocative at a time when the United States
was attempting to launch a new Middle East peace process. Final authorization
for targeting Rantisi came from Sharon, according to Israeli officials.
*Washington Post Foreign Service
**Correspondent John Ward
Anderson and researcher Islam Abdelkarim in Gaza City and researchers
Hillary Claussen and Ian Dietch in Jerusalem contributed to this report.