Contents

• Might makes right
• Assassins from gangs to freedom fighters
• Removing opposition
• Jews killing Jews
• Murder for hire
• Terrorism by a democracy
• A wide group of satellites
• First-hand experience
• Beyond the sovereignty of the state
• No Palestinian assassination strategy

• Pre-State (1902-1948)
• From 1948 to 1967
• From 1967 to 1987
• The Intifada
• The Oslo Process From 1993 to 2000

• Determining the target
• Means of collecting information
• Implementation

The Israeli assassination of the Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Abu Ali Mustapha on August 27, 2001 carried the previous Israeli assassination policy into a new and more dangerous phase. The proof of that lies in the Palestinian response, carried out by the PFLP, in assassinating Israeli minister Rahavam Ze'evy. That assassination brought confrontations between the two sides (as well as Palestinian resistance, in general) into a new and perilous phase.

It is evident that recent development of the Israeli assassination policy and then its adoption - for the first time - by Palestinians has pushed the ongoing struggle and confrontations towards an irreversible situation. Both have proven the hypothesis of this research concerning the danger of continuing the Israeli assassination policy against Palestinians, particularly as there has been no deterrence offered from outside.

The continuity of an Israeli assassination policy that has touched the highest ranks of the political leadership has contributed to transferring this fight into an existential realm. This transition is in harmony with the ideology of this Israeli right-wing government, which does not believe in the compromise that the two sides had been trying to reach in negotiations. A policy of assassination is also congruent with the strategies and ideologies of some Palestinian factions that do not believe in Israeli-Palestinian compromise, but rather push the struggle towards an existential conflict. The practices of the current Israeli government and the Palestinian opposition to the peace process reinforce each other. The assassination policy and its results are examples of this.

The Israeli use of assassinations has been a major strategy in its confrontations with Palestinians since the beginning of the conflict. That it has been intensified during the current Intifada and carried to the highest levels of politics and leadership is another sign of the Israeli government's mentality that contradicts the spirit of compromise and the desire to reach an agreement. It is the tool of those who believe in a zero sum game.

In the same way, we can look at the Palestinian response, the assassination of Ze'evy, as a sign that the Israeli insistence on carrying out assassinations can produce a similarly dangerous response and that Palestinians, when under extreme pressure, can become quite lethal.

The assassination of Ze'evy has put this struggle at a crossroads. It might have had a deterrent effect on Israel, convincing Israeli citizens that increasing the pressure on the Palestinians, through assassinations in particular, might have dangerous consequences. Israel could have been forced to try other approaches - peaceful ones, for example. Or it could have been the start of a massive retaliation from the Israeli side, further emphasizing the existential nature of the current ongoing confrontation. The immediate Israel reaction shows that Israel has chosen the second option, especially considering that part of the Israeli response was to assassinate a prominent Fateh leader in Bethlehem, together with whoever happened to be with him in his car.

With no serious international interference to convince Israel of the illegality, irrationality and dangerous product of its assassination policy, it is clear that things will continue to deteriorate and assassination will become the most prominent strategy in this ongoing struggle. More and more, the violent confrontations between the two sides seem headed to irreversibility.

 Ghassan Khatib,
JMCC Director

THE CURRENT phenomenon of political assassination is part of a broader Israeli phenomenon of using military power and violence as a means to achieve political goals. The need for a discussion of the roots of these phenomena has motivated this research to include a survey of assassinations in the past up until the present. To my knowledge, this is the first time that a Palestinian or Arab researcher has tackled the issue.

This study explores the following: why the Israeli assassination policy is important in the current Intifada and the problems faced in this research; the historical background and present reality of assassination within the Zionist movement and the state of Israel, including ways assassination has been and remains an important part of Zionist praxis; the differing historical phases of this policy; the objectives of Israel's assassination policy; a summarized anatomy of assassination including the mechanisms and its implementation; the characteristics that define assassination in the current Intifada, and finally a detailed list of the casualties of the policy from the start of the uprising up until August 15, 2001.(1) Cases discussed in the text will not be accompanied by full details; readers should refer to the appendix for the circumstances of each individual case.

The reader will notice the absence of a legal and human rights dimension to this research. This tack has been chosen because there are many institutes and organizations that fulfill the role of describing the ways that assassination violates law and human rights.(2)

Israeli assassination policy violates the right to life, the most fundamental of all human rights enshrined in religious, international and even Israeli law. There is no legal basis for these killings. The Israeli army plays the role of informer, attorney, judge and executioner and the decision to kill is implemented with no legal process whatsoever. As Yael Stein from B'tselem Human Rights Association put it, "Problems are rife from the initial decision through all stages of the process, problems which render any legal justification Israel could mount irrelevant."(3)

Today, one of the roles of assassination as used by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, is to prevent the possibility for political compromise. However, while Israel may enjoy great technical success at killing the Palestinians it has targeted, the policy of assassinations is clearly a political failure. It has never managed to stop Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation and generations of activists have been replaced by new waves of leaders.

As this study demonstrates, assassination as extrajudicial execution is deeply rooted historically, institutionally and theoretically in the political and ideological life of Israel. Assassination against Palestinians is carried out as Avraham Burg attests: through their complete dehumanization. It is this very same dehumanization and cultural differentiation that was the driving force behind the many massacres committed by the Zionist movement in 1948, which lead to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

(1)  This list contains 62 victims of which there is incontrovertible evidence that the casualties resulted from assassination. It is, however, necessary to point out that a second list could be composed including cases where the circumstances of death were more vague.

(2)  See A License to Kill, Israeli Undercover Operations Against "Wanted" and Masked Palestinians, Middle East Watch/ Human Rights Watch July 1993. Also see Targeting to Kill: Israel's Undercover Units, Palestine Human Rights Information Center, Jerusalem, May 1992. Also see Willful Killings: A Sustained Israeli Policy in the Occupied Territories, Human Rights Focus, Al Haq, November 21, 1992.

(3)   B'tselem, p. 11.