From: "Stasi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2001 06:14:50 +0100 To: "Peoples War" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [Peoples War] Palestine: Israel's Assasinations Prove Popular - Guardian (UK) Jerusalem dispatch http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,531999,00.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Israel's targeted killings strike popular chord ============================== Nine in 10 Israelis support their government's policy of assassinations, reports Suzanne Goldenberg Friday August 3, 2001 The last few days have produced an outpouring of international criticism against Israel's assassination of Palestinian activists, led by the US, the European Union, and Arab states. But inside Israel, there is extraordinary support for the targeted killings which have left more than 40 militants dead and killed more than a dozen innocent bystanders, including two children in the West Bank city of Nablus this week. Britain called the attack "wrong and illegal". Yesterday, the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, reinforced unusually barbed criticism of Israel, saying its guided missile attack on a block of flats in Nablus - which killed two Hamas activists, and six others including the young boys - was "too aggressive". "It just serves to increase the level of tension and violence in the region," he said, adding, "Targeted killing does not help." But aside from a small leftwing minority, the dissections of the Nablus attack that have preoccupied the Israeli press arrive at the same conclusion: Israel has no other choice. Ninety per cent of Israelis want the army to carry on with its targeted assassinations, according to a poll conducted last week for the Ma'ariv newspaper. Some 27% supported assassinating Yasser Arafat himself. The convergence of opinions is striking; most Israelis appear to accept without question the argument of their government and army that there is no way to stop the suicide bombers other than pre-emptive killing. Though the suicide attacks inside the Jewish state are relatively unsophisticated, demanding little in the way of training or equipment, they have inflicted a high toll. More than 20 Israelis, mainly teenagers, were killed in an attack on a Tel Aviv disco in June; police have thwarted a spate of bombing attacks in recent days. But many people fear the next deadly bombing is only a question of time away. That dread informs much of the domestic support for assassination. The prime minister, Ariel Sharon, called the raid on Nablus "one of Israel's most important successes". The foreign minister, Shimon Peres, often seen as the restraining hand in a hardline government, said: "The only place where it is possible to stop him [a bomber] is before he sets off. I ask the leaders of the world, 'How would they stop the terror?'" Even Ha'aretz, a liberal Israeli newspaper whose journalists have produced almost the only critical reporting of Israel's conduct during the 10-month Palestinian uprising, concluded there was nothing wrong - in principle - with the assassination policy, given prevailing circumstances. "It is certainly difficult for enlightened persons to defend an air attack targeting a location inside a residential neighbourhood in the heart of a populous city which caused, by accident the deaths of two young children," said a Ha'aretz editorial. "Nevertheless, the current reality is so gloomy that there is no choice but to support without reservation the political echelon's decision on Tuesday to attack the heads of the Hamas in Nablus," it said. The point where the consensus breaks down is on the effectiveness of assassinations. Most analysts brush aside moral and legal arguments against assassination. Instead, they focus their attention on the question of whether assassinations "work". Several security analysts say Israel's assassination of high-profile Hamas political leaders this week - a departure from its targeting of bomb assemblers and gunmen - is a dangerous escalation. The Palestinians "will stop functioning within limits which they had previously stayed within," analyst Reuven Pedatzur wrote in Ha'aretz. "We are caught up here in a whirlpool... We are taking step after step towards a kind of whirlpool which will bring us to a war." However, Boaz Ganor, director of the Institute for Counter Terrorism in Herziliya, argues that assassinations should be viewed through "a cost-benefit analysis": do assassinations seriously damage the military infrastructure of Hamas? Although he admits the danger of throngs of would-be suicide bombers lining up to retaliate for the killing of their leaders, he concludes that only Israel's security agencies can be the judge of the assassination policy. "Israeli intelligence can be assumed to be in possession of concrete information on what these 'ivy league' terrorists were engaged in before they were killed," he writes. "The security apparatus is thus the only body in a position to effectively analyse whether the operation was worth the possibility of one or more 'boomerang' attacks," concluded Mr Ganor. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. 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