Israel May Resume Assassinations as Mideast Strife
Returns
By Laura King
Times Staff Writer
June 23, 2005
JERUSALEM — Israel hinted Wednesday that it was returning to a policy
of "targeted killings" of Palestinian militants, a practice it had
largely abandoned under a truce struck four months ago.
It appeared that the immediate threat of assassination applied only to
members of Islamic Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for recent
attacks against Israelis.
Israeli security officials
confirmed that a missile strike in the Gaza Strip a day earlier had
been an attempt to kill an Islamic Jihad member, whom they did not
identify.
"Any means to neutralize this organization are
relevant and possible," the Israeli minister for public security,
Gideon Ezra, told reporters.
The warning underscored the rapid
cooling of relations between the government of Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The two
leaders met Tuesday for the first time since Feb. 8, but by most
accounts the session was quarrelsome and unproductive.
The
apparent policy reversal was somewhat ambiguous because even after
renouncing targeted killings in February, Israel reserved the right to
go after "ticking bombs" — anyone who was about to carry out an attack.
It was not known whether the man Israel tried to hit in Tuesday's
missile strike fell into that category.
Throughout the more
than four years of the current conflict, Israel has targeted scores of
Palestinian militants for death, including Sheik Ahmed Yassin,
spiritual leader of the group Hamas. The attacks were usually carried
out with missiles fired by helicopters or drone aircraft, hitting
militants in their cars or on motorbikes. One was on a donkey-drawn
cart.
Sometimes the target was suspected of involvement in an
imminent attack against Israelis. But some, such as Yassin and his
successor, Abdulaziz Rantisi, slain weeks apart last year, were senior
leaders with varying degrees of involvement in the day-to-day planning
of lethal acts.
On Wednesday, an Israeli aircraft fired
missiles that destroyed what the army said were several rocket
launchers in the northern West Bank. A military spokesman said the
strike was aimed only at the launchers, not at an individual.
An Islamic Jihad spokesman in the Gaza Strip, Khader Habib, said if
targeted killings resumed, the group would respond with force. "If they
target any leader or activist, we won't sit by with our hands folded,"
he said.
Even before Tuesday's attempted killing, Israel had
signaled that Islamic Jihad was in its crosshairs. In the last two
days, Israeli forces have rounded up more than 60 suspected members,
the first time in months that troops have made so many arrests. Defense
Minister Shaul Mofaz and other officials said Israel would confront the
militia without restraint.
In another sign of increasing
tension, Israel warned for the first time that if Palestinian militants
launched attacks as Jewish settlements were being evacuated as planned
this summer, it might respond with airstrikes on Palestinian areas.
In crowded Gaza, such a barrage would carry a high risk of civilian
casualties.
"Israel will act in a very resolute manner to prevent terror attacks
while the disengagement is being implemented," said Eival Giladi, a
senior aide to Sharon, using Israel's term for the pullout from all 21
Jewish settlements in Gaza and four small sites in the West Bank. The
withdrawal is to begin in mid-August.
"We may have to use
weaponry that can cause severe collateral damage, including helicopters
and planes, with increased danger to people in the surrounding areas,"
Giladi said.
Wednesday also brought fresh indications of the
chaos and lawlessness plaguing the Palestinian territories,
particularly in Gaza and pockets of the West Bank.
In the
Balata refugee camp outside the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian
gunmen fired volleys of bullets outside a building where Prime Minister
Ahmed Korei was speaking, then set off an explosive device as he left
the area. The Palestinian leader was not injured, nor were the members
of his entourage.
The prime minister had traveled to Balata, a stronghold of militant
groups, to talk about the need for law and order.
"This is an example of exactly the kind of deterioration in the
internal security situation that we are trying to address," said Nabil
Shaath, the Palestinian deputy prime minister.
Israel,
meanwhile, was strongly criticized by New York-based Human Rights
Watch, which accused authorities of failing to adequately investigate
hundreds of Palestinian civilian deaths during the last four years.
Citing what it termed a "climate of impunity," the group said in a new
report that it believed the Israeli military had investigated fewer
than 5% of more than 1,600 civilian deaths that had occurred since
September 2000, when the Palestinian uprising began.
The army
responded that it had "carefully and seriously" investigated cases in
which there was reason to believe there had been wrongdoing. "The fact
that innocent people were harmed does not necessarily indicate soldiers
are guilty of a crime," the military said in a statement.
Human
Rights Watch urged Israel to create an independent panel to investigate
allegations of rights abuses by troops and said the results of such
probes should be made public.
