 |  |
Click for Contents
|
P.O. Box 1805,Jerusalem 91017 Tel. 972-2-531-5440, Fax: 972-2-537-9489 Advertising Fax: 972-2-531-5425, Email Editorial: [email protected] Subscriptions: [email protected] Web site: http://www.jrep.com |
Surgical Strikes?
Ina Friedman
The government robustly defends what it calls �preemptive attacks� on Intifada leaders. But when asked whether the right targets are being hit, it is at a loss for words.
The policy debuted spectacularly last November 9, when a missile fired from a helicopter gunship killed 34-year-old Hussein Abayat, a leader of the Fatah-linked Tanzim militia, in his car � and two innocent women bystanders � in the West Bank town of Beit Sahur. Abayat, military sources alleged, was responsible for the shooting at the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo and attacks on Israeli soldiers in the Bethlehem area.
Between then and late January, say Israeli and international human-rights agencies, eight other suspected Palestinian gunmen or militia leaders were killed by means ranging from the detonation of a remote-control bomb, to tank fire, sharpshooters, and close-to-point-blank fire at a roadblock. In the process, six other Palestinians � bystanders, according to the Is-raeli human-rights organization B�Tselem � were also killed.
Official Israel refers to this policy as �preemptive attacks on terrorists operating out of the areas under Palestinian control�; Amnesty International calls it �extra-judicial executions,� and the Hebrew press, eschewing euphemisms, calls it simply �assassination� or �liquidation.� In ethical terms, the dilemma it poses can be framed simply: If a democracy perceives a conflict between its obligations to protect its citizens from harm and to uphold the rule of law, which of these duties takes precedence?
The government�s point-man on this issue, Deputy Defense Minister Efraim Sneh, has no qualms. In fact, he has honed down his defense of the liquidation policy to the three-word encomium that it is �precise, effective, and just.�
�Look, we are engaged in a war against terrorism, but every measure we take is criticized,� says Sneh, an ex-head of the Civil Administration in the territories. �Tanks are too brutal; helicopter gunships are an indiscriminate and �excessive� use of force: What are we expected to do? To take the most precise, selective and surgical mode of countermeasures. Those who preach to us tend to forget that our first responsibility is to protect Israelis. If I know that somebody [in the Palestinian-controlled areas] is preparing a car bomb, what am I supposed to do? Write him a warning letter? Send him a subpoena?�
Tellingly, the author of the Israel Defense Forces code of ethics, Tel Aviv University philosophy Prof. Assa Kasher, also lends support to the policy of preemptive attacks � providing, he stresses, that certain conditions are met. �The motive must clearly be preemption, not punishment; only the courts can mete out punishment,� he says. �And we must be sure, know as a fact � not a probability or a rumor� that the suspect is �presently engaged in the process of carrying out a terror action� (a kind of �ticking bomb� situation) and that �we can�t catch him without endangering the lives of our troops.�
Kasher also believes it important that a �professional authority� approve the operation. �I mean an independent professional agency, not the minister in charge,� he explains. �Someone should propose the action and someone else should approve it, for when responsibility is divided among a number of people, there are fewer errors.�
In an unusual move, evidently taken to quell criticism of the liquidations, even the army�s chief legal officer, Brig. Gen. Menachem Finklestein, reportedly wrote a legal opinion permitting the summary killing of a terrorist, if there is no other way to stop him, in order to save human life. The top legal officer is not known for commenting on general policies; one politician suggests that the move was specifically meant to give those involved legal cover.
BUT FOR ALL THESE ARGU-ments and assurances, human-rights groups continue to raise trenchant questions � particularly about the gap between their findings and Sneh�s claims about the �precision� with which targets are identified, the �surgical mode� of the operations, and Israel�s inability to capture any of the suspects it has killed.
Liz Hodgkin of Amnesty International, who did the field research for a forthcoming report on Israel�s extra-judicial executions, points out that two of the targeted terrorist suspects � Jamal Abd al-Razek, 33, and Hani Abu Bakra, 31 � were killed at Israeli checkpoints, leading her to conclude that �Israel could perfectly well have arrested them.�
What�s more, she reports, in the Abd al-Razek case, �two passengers in a completely separate vehicle stopped at the checkpoint were also killed.� And in the Abu Bakra case, after the taxi being driven by the suspect had halted and he was asked to step out of it, �three of the passengers in the vehicle were wounded by indiscriminate gunfire, and one later died of his wounds.�
Without question, however, the case that has raised the most questions about the policy�s justness, not to mention the utter probity of its aims, is that of Dr. Thabet Thabet, the 49-year-old dentist and secretary general of the Fatah organization in Tul Karm who was gunned down by Israeli forces in front of his home on December 31. By all accounts, Thabet was an improbable candidate for the title of terrorist. For a decade he had participated in reconciliation dialogues with Israeli peace activists, forged personal ties with them and, in a gesture of humanity and respect, had even attended the military funeral of the son of one his Israeli dialogue partners, Peace Now activist Yehudit Harel. The young man had died in a car accident while on active duty.
�Dr. Thabet was a Fatah �Mapainik,� not radical by the furthest stretch of the imagination,� says Harel. �It�s impossible for me to believe that this man, who was a deputy director of the Palestinian Health Ministry, was involved in the kind of field operations that would mark him as a terrorist.�
�In point of fact, no one has ever stated that Dr. Thabet was engaged in terrorist activity,� notes Ya�akov Manor, another participant in the peace dialogues. �My guess is that the military recommended a strike against the Fatah �infrastructure,� and that�s why he was killed. I�ve tried to track down the source of the decision to kill Tha-bet by going through Knesset members,� Manor adds, �but I�ve gotten nowhere.�
Meretz MK Naomi Chazan, a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, confirms the government�s locked-lips policy on the Thabet case. �Nobody is answering any questions,� she says.
In talking to The Report, Sneh took pains to stress that �Israel definitely does not target political, religious, or spiritual leaders. I want to underscore that.� But when asked about the Thabet case, he said he was not prepared to discuss any specific incident. Other top officials and politicians will discuss neither that specific case nor the general policy. And no one will detail how targets are selected and approved.
BEYOND THE MORAL DEBATE, differences of opinion exist about the policy�s short- and long-term practical benefit. Sneh speaks confidently of its deterrent impact, asserting that �the terrorists are now busier dealing with their own safety than with preparing new attacks.� He also argues that direct strikes on terrorist suspects serve Israel�s �strategic goal� of advancing Israelis and Palestinians toward mutual reconciliation. �For what does more harm to the cause of reconciliation,� he asks rhetorically, �than explosions with many casualties in Netanyah and Haderah, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv?�
Some professional observers, however, argue the reverse. Anat Kurz, an expert on low-intensity warfare at Tel Aviv University�s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, believes it a mistake to target the leaders of the Fatah�s Tanzim militia. �These are the people who effectively control the �Palestinian street,�� she explains, and stoking their rage �will impair the chances of reducing the level of violence and restoring calm when a change in the political circumstances demands it. It�s a confidence-destroying measure.�
Kurz is also disturbed by what she detects as hidden aims and messages of the policy that are divorced from professional considerations. One of these, she senses, is revenge. �Of course, no one will admit it,� Kurz says, �because military people are not supposed to be engaged in revenge. But on the psychological level, there�s certainly an element of vengeance in the liquidation policy. And to some degree, it�s designed simply to show the Israeli public that the government is doing something.�
Thinking along similar lines, Chazan says the assassinations are likely to prove counterproductive. �They increases the hatred [among Palestinians], invite similar kinds of actions against Israelis, and will draw us into a horrid spiral of tit-for-tat,� she warns. �So essentially the policy will backfire on us, at the very least by making the conflict all the more ugly.�
It is difficult to argue with the last part of that prognosis. For the most immediate byproduct of the liquidation policy was six lightning show trials and two gruesome public executions by the Palestinian Authority of citizens condemned as collaborators with Israel, who assisted in a number of these liquidation attacks.
Prime Minister Ehud Barak was quick to condemn the Palestinian Authority for choosing to �pursue a policy of show trials which is reminiscent of history�s dark periods.� And both B�Tselem and the Palestinian human-rights group LAW have published condemnations of the executions based on unfair trials. (See The Back Page for a debate on the collaborator killings.)
Yet the brunt of the criticism by human-rights groups remains focused squarely on Israel�s deviations from the code of legal behavior that obliges self-respecting democracies.
�Israelis, Jews, and everyone who cares should be concerned about a policy of execution on totally secret evidence, without any right to defense or appeal. We don�t even know who gives the orders or who signs the death warrants,� Hodgkin sums up the message of Amnesty International�s forthcoming report.
In speaking of the dangers of the �slippery slope,� B�Tselem�s position paper warns that Israel�s refusal to publicly define precisely who is a legitimate target of liquidation may open the way for assaults on �a broad range of people, at various levels of [political] responsibility� � especially as the assassinations are conducted �without any external oversight, legal or public, of the actions of the security forces.�
But Sneh is equally confirmed in his conviction that, under the present conditions of hostilities, the Israeli government faces only one test: �Do you prevent the next terror attack or don�t you?�
�I totally reject all the exhortations and preaching,� he says, slamming even the most nuanced criticism of the liquidation approach as �hypocrisy� and the long-standing �double standard� practiced toward Israel. �What is totally immoral,� he insists, �is to demand that a government not do whatever is necessary to protect its citizens.�
�Suppose a car explodes here in Tel Aviv, and I have to explain that I knew who was planning the operation but couldn�t arrest him [because he was in the Palestinian Authority�s jurisdiction] and wouldn�t [eliminate] him because somebody, somewhere, might say that that�s not �nice.� What shall I say to the families of the people who are ripped to pieces by that bomb? I know some people would prefer that we do nothing more than throw stones at our assailants. But in real life, things don�t work that way.�
l
Israel
|
 |
|
© The Jerusalem Report 1999-2001 |  |