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Israel won�t suspend targeted killings during U.S. cease-fire effort
Leslie Susser
Israel has flatly ruled out suspending its policy of targeted killings of key Palestinian terrorists during the current cease-fire mediation mission of Secretary Powell�s special envoy retired Marines Corps general Anthony Zinni.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon�s media adviser, Ra�anan Gissin, told The Report that as long as there are �hot and specific warnings� of imminent suicide bombings, Israel will act to foil them. Like the Americans in Afghanistan, Gissin said, �we are exercising our right to self-defense on the basis of Article 51 of the U.N. Charter... Should we allow the suicide bombings to take place? And if we did, would that help create the climate for a cease-fire?�
Although Secretary of State Colin Powell, in the November 19 speech in which he announced the Zinni-led cease-fire effort, spoke generally of the need to find �an end to the violence,� Gissin says that the Americans have not been pressing Israel to stop the targeted killings. Moreover, Gissin asserts, Zinni knows all about terror and its wider significance for the free world. �When the Americans are fighting along the same parameters as we are,� says Gissin, �how can they ask us to sit with folded arms and allow our citizens to be killed?�
Dismissing Palestinian claims that Israel had deliberately timed the targeted killing of Hamas military leader Mahmud Abu Hanud three days before Zinni�s arrival to reduce the chances of the mission�s success, Gissin says, �There is no question of bad timing concerning a ticking bomb.� On the contrary, he says, �Israel wants to convince the Palestinians that violence will get them nowhere and persuade them to go back to the negotiating table. And the most effective method we have used up till now is targeted prevention.� Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer has said it would have been �inconceivable� for Israel not to have killed Abu Hanud, the most dangerous Hamas activist in the West Bank, who was said to have or-chestrated numerous suicide bombings and other attacks on Israeli targets.
The targeted killings will only stop, Gissin says, if and when the Palestinians take firm steps to thwart the would-be bombers. If there is a genuine cease-fire, he adds, Israel will scrupulously observe it as long as the Palestinians do.
Palestinian Authority officials assert that what they call Israel�s assassination policy is radicalizing the Palestinian public, and merely producing more potential bombers. At the same time, however, support for the policy crosses Israel�s party lines. Even the dovish op-position Meretz backs liquidation of what it calls �arch-terrorists� like Abu Hanud.
Ran Cohen, one of the party�s representatives on the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, describes the timing of the Abu Hanud killing as problematic, since it came after a long period of relative quiet, he says, and just days before the latest American diplomatic initiative. But on balance, he justifies the action, since Abu Hanud had a lot of blood on his hands and, operationally, it was probably a rare opportunity to target a man who spent most of his time in hiding. Moreover, Cohen adds optimistically, the timing may turn out to have a positive side: �The Palestinian Authority may move to prevent an escalating cycle of action and reaction, and give the Zinni mission a chance.�
(December 17, 2001)
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