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Jury, judge and executioner
by
Saleh Abdel-Jawad
Political assassinations
during the current Intifada have claimed at least 50 individuals from
across the whole political spectrum, including political leaders,
activists from military groups and civilians. Although Israel's policy
may have damaged some of the operational capacity of the organisations
it targets, its primary effect has been to invigorate the Intifada with
fresh waves of popular outrage. One of the objectives of political
assassinations in the Sharon era, indeed, is to provoke the
Palestinians, thus justifying reprisals that make it impossible to
address the political agenda.
Assassinations are rooted in
Israel's political culture, and in that of the Zionist movement before the
state's establishment in 1948.
Before the first Intifada,
from 1967 to '87, the main targets of Israeli assassinations outside the
occupied territories were Diaspora PLO cadres, and particularly senior
political leaders from the organisation's various sub- groupings (though
most were from Fatah), as well as military cadres suspected of involvement
in military attacks against Israel in the West Bank, Gaza or abroad.
During this period, a committee to "fight terror" was created at Golda
Meir's initiative, led by General Aharon Yariv. During this "ghost war,"
Israel rarely claimed responsibility for the assassinations it carried
out.
Within the occupied
territories, assassination was not used against political leaders,
whom Israel preferred to deport. Extra-judicial executions were used
intensively in the Gaza Strip, however, during Sharon's campaign to
suppress the popular resistance movement between 1970 and '73. The Rimon
unit, created by Sharon -- who at the time was the military commander of
the South -- liquidated tens of wanted Palestinian activists according to
a list updated monthly. In this way, Sharon laid the foundations upon
which Barak would later build the Mista'ravim liquidation units
(Israeli special forces dressed like Arabs to infiltrate their targets'
communities).
Extra-judicial killings
intensified during the first Intifada. During this period, Israel changed
its original policy as formulated in the 1970s, no longer restricting
assassinations to a select few senior leaders, but expanding their range
to include middle-rank cadres and grassroots activists -- and, notably, 25
young Palestinians caught writing political graffiti. Among them, a
14-year-old boy from Jenin, Walid Al-Souqi, was shot point-blank while
begging for his life. One hundred Palestinian activists were assassinated
during the first Intifada, often at the hands of Mista'ravim units.
Israeli and international human rights organisations correctly termed this
policy extra-judicial execution. The first Intifada also witnessed the
targeting of amateur paramilitary groups allied to Fatah, Hamas and the
PFLP. In what may have been the most poignant example of Israel's
extra-judicial assassinations, a Palestinian youth was killed by
undercover units while scrawling "Yes to Peace" on a wall on the eve of
the 1991 Madrid conference
During the Oslo years
(1993-2000), Israel's assassination policy was mainly restricted to the
Islamist opposition. Notable cases included Yehia 'Ayyash, Mohieddin Al-Sharif,
and the 'Awadallah brothers, all associated with the military wing of
Hamas. Additionally, between the signing of the Oslo accord on 13
September 1993 and the PA's arrival in Jericho and Gaza in mid-1994,
Israel worked hard to liquidate what had remained of the paramilitary
groups after the first Intifada.
Several features have
characterised assassinations in the present Intifada. First, they
target Fatah activists as well as Islamists; second, the intensity
of assassinations is unprecedented; third, the Israelis are using
entirely new methods, including attacks by Apache assault
helicopters, Hellfire and TOW (surface-to-surface) missiles and
tanks, as well as the shelling of houses.
Official Israeli state
institutions have not been the only executors of the assassination
policy. Jewish terrorist organisations working independently, and
composed of extremist Zionists such as the members of the Jewish
Defence League (formerly led by Rabbi Meir Kahana), have also been
extremely active. Kahana initially chose the United States as the
target of his terrorist operations, before transferring them to the
occupied territories. In the US, the murders of Soliman Al-Farouqi
and his wife, in addition to the killing of leading Palestinian
political activist Alexander Odeh, are only the better-known
examples of extremist Zionist terror.
Since independent
organisations claim responsibility for such extra-judicial killings,
Israel need not fear political or moral repercussions, although the
state may have participated at least by providing the perpetrators
with moral justification. For example, the June 1980 attempts to
kill nationalist Palestinian mayors Bassam Shaq'a, Karim Khalaf and
Ibrahim Tawil, carried out by extremist settlers affiliated to an
underground Jewish organisation Hamakhteret Hayehudit, could
not have taken place without the advanced slur campaign coordinated
by the Israeli authorities, not to mention the logistical assistance
afforded by the army. The explosives used and the precise
information required were quite simply inaccessible to the settlers
themselves.
Israel has assassinated
a great many Palestinians by violating the sovereignty of other
countries, including allies. Approximately 10 assassinations have
been carried out on French soil alone since 1972; but that nation is
not alone. Many of the victims were not remotely involved in
military activities, as illustrated by the cases of Wael Za'itar or
Majed Abu Sharar in Italy. The 1998 attempt to assassinate Khaled
Mish'al, a senior Hamas political leader, in Jordan shows Israel's
cynical disregard for the sovereignty of an Arab country (and peace
partner to boot), which moreover had exerted great efforts to deter
violations of Israeli security.
Western collusion in
these attacks has been frequent, especially in France, where
right-wing racist elements in the police force have shown an
eagerness to cooperate with Israeli assassins that would not have
been in evidence had other targets been involved -- even if those
parties had been "real terrorists" rather than leaders of a people
struggling to free themselves from colonialism.
Nor are political
assassinations restricted to Palestinians alone. Israel has also
involved itself in assassinations on the Arab and international
fronts in the service of counter- revolutionary forces. For
instance, it forged ties of cooperation with French officers in
Algeria, and was involved in the assassination of FLN figures there,
particularly in Algiers. In addition, Israel participated in the
assassination of Moroccan revolutionary Mehdi Ben Barakeh in 1965,
with the blessing of then Mossad head Meir Amit. In Latin America,
too, Israel or its mercenaries, sometimes through direct
coordination with the Israeli Ministry of Defence or the Mossad,
have helped eliminate revolutionary cadres and worked closely with
the most dictatorial and brutal regimes. Recent examples include
Israel's participation in the kidnapping of Kurdish PKK leader
Abdallah Ocalan and the assassination of Chechen leader Dodayef.
Israel has never
assassinated any individual and claimed responsibility for the
action before having paved the way with political and media coverage
that frames the victim as a terrorist and murderer. Israel ensures
Western sympathy by presenting its actions as necessary to avoid the
"spilling of Jewish blood" -- rhetoric that plays on Western guilt
very effectively.
Publicity campaigns that
accompanied all the assassinations carried out in Europe during the
1970s referred to Israeli victims of the 1972 Munich operation,
which received widespread international condemnation. 20 individuals
accused of "masterminding" this operation were killed, although only
one had actually been involved in planning it. In much the same way,
the assassination of Fatah second-in-command Abu Jihad in Tunisia
was justified by linking him to an attack on Israel's nuclear
reactor in Dimona. As for the case of the writer Ghassan Kanafani,
Israel did the groundwork by publishing pictures that, it claimed,
showed Kanafani with Japanese members of the Red Army Faction who
had carried out the attack against civilians at Lydd Airport. In
reality, the person in the pictures, who appeared in profile, bore
only a vague resemblance to Kanafani.
Israel's policy of
assassination is due partly to power worship, and partly to the fact
that it can no longer "protect itself from itself." Since Menachem
Begin left office in 1983, five prime ministers have come to power,
all of them, whether Likud or Labour, military men specialised
throughout their careers in the "art of killing." With the exception
of Labour Premier Yitzhak Rabin, who served in the regular army
(which generally abides by codes of conflict in wartime), they
dedicated most of their army careers to Special Units, which
nurtured the instinct to "kill without thought." The current prime
minister, Ariel Sharon, established Unit 101, whose task it was to
massacre Palestinian refugees attempting to return to their homes
and lands near the Green Line throughout the 1950s. Of course, he
was also the mastermind behind the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
As for Ehud Barak, he
was a member and then commander of Sayeret Matkal (the
General Staff Squad), of which the primary goal throughout the 1970s
was the assassination of Palestinian leaders. During his reign as
head of the Central region immediately before the first Intifada,
and as chief of staff after 1992, Barak was personally responsible
for the activities of the Mista'ravim units, whose
assassinations escalated during the first Intifada as noted above.
Barak also personally assassinated the Palestinian poet Kamal Nasser
at his home in the Fardan quarter of Beirut.
Binyamin Netanyahu was a
member of Sayeret Matkal during the time of Barak. Yitzhak
Shamir was a high commander in the Lehi terrorist organisation
(which rejected the authority of the official Zionist leadership
before the foundation of the Israeli state), and was wanted for
murdering several British soldiers during the Mandate period. Shamir
also helped plan the assassination of UN Special Envoy Count Folke
Bernadotte. Due to his "distinguished record," and although he
served in an opposition organisation, Shamir was assigned to the
special units section of the Mossad after Israel's creation.
However unpleasant such
conclusions, first-hand killing seems to be an indispensable
qualification on the resume of any potential Israeli prime minister
today.
Israel's policy of
political assassination enables it to fulfill a number of
objectives. The first is revenge -- namely, punishing
individuals accused of involvement in attacks on Israeli soldiers,
settlers or civilians, or against Zionist institutions and
organisations outside Israel. Israeli governments have presented
this reason as their primary defence and have attempted to frame
assassinations as the necessary dispensing of justice.
A second objective is
the prevention or disruption of any political or social changes with
which the target may be involved.
Third, Israel achieves
publicity and intimidation objectives, by sending out the message
that it is capable of reaching and punishing its enemies wherever
they may be, and thus demonstrating (particularly to its allies) its
"awesome" capabilities and power.
A fourth objective of
assassinations is deterrence; a fifth is to deprive
Palestinian organisations of competent leaders. This tactic has been
especially effective in the cases of Abu Jihad (Fatah), Ghassan
Kanafani (the PFLP), Yehia 'Ayyash (Hamas) and Khalil Shiqaki
(Islamic Jihad).
Sixth, the current
Intifada has revealed a new objective of the assassination policy,
namely direct provocation. By fuelling Palestinian anger, Israel
creates a pretext for a wider military assault. The cold-blooded
killing of five Palestinian security personnel at a check-point in
Beitunia on 14 May, while they were sleeping or eating, and the
attack on the Hamas media centre in Nablus in late July (killing,
among others, two high-ranking Hamas political leaders and two
children) are two examples out of many others.
In implementing its
assassination policy, Israel has used methods ranging from the crude
-- attacks on the homes of wanted persons (Abu Jihad) -- to the
slightly more sophisticated -- explosives hidden in telephones
(Islamic Jihad activist Ayad Hardan, 4 May; Mahmoud Al- Hamshari,
the first semi-official representative of the PLO to France, in
Paris, 1972; or Hamas military leader Yehia 'Ayyash, January 1996);
car bombs (Hamas military leader Ibrahim Beni Odeh in Nablus,
December 2000); and bombs planted in homes or hotel rooms (Fatah
Central Committee member Majed Abu Sharar in Rome, 1981).
These methods, however,
have changed considerably during the current Intifada. Since the
first few weeks, Israel has sought to portray the uprising as a
state of war and thus transform the Intifada into a complete
confrontation behind which a wide Israeli consensus can be formed in
support of Israel's use of power and suppression. This has also
enabled the adoption of methods that were not traditionally used
against civilian populations.
Israel has also turned
the reality it has created on the ground, particularly during the
Oslo years, to the advantage of its assassination policy: the
dismemberment of Palestinian towns, villages and refugee camps, as
well as the large numbers of Israeli troops stationed on the
periphery of Palestinian population concentrations and along the
roads, serve it well in this respect. Its important network of
collaborators and a population easily monitored through the
technological advantages Israel enjoys are additional weapons in its
arsenal.
In its most recent
attacks, Israel has been using US-made Apache and Cobra attack
helicopters capable of striking extremely precise targets and moving
at high speed. They are easily manoeuvred, can be used in all
weather conditions, and are equipped with sophisticated night vision
and navigational capabilities. They were first used in the current
Intifada against the head of the Bethlehem Tanzim, Hussein Ubeiyat,
killed on 9 November 2000.
Another "innovation" of
the current Intifada is the increased use of snipers who monitor
their victims carefully, usually from fixed observation positions
located in settlements or military installations, both of
which are generally constructed on high ground near the periphery of
Palestinian concentrations. Targets can be killed at distances of up
to 800m. Five out of six sniper operations during the current
Intifada have claimed their intended victims. A sniper killed Thabet
Thabet, the first political leader assassinated in the current
Intifada, a leading member of the Red Crescent Society and Fatah
secretary-general in Tulkarem, on 31 December 2000.
Israel's assassination
policy violates the right to life, the most fundamental of all human
rights, enshrined in religious, international and even Israeli law.
The Israeli army plays the role of informer, attorney, judge and
executioner; the decision to kill is implemented with no legal
process whatsoever. As Yael Stein of the B'tselem Human Rights
Association puts it: "Problems are rife from the initial decision
through all stages of the process -- problems which render any legal
justification Israel could mount irrelevant."
Sharon is now using this
time-honoured policy to eliminate the possibility of any political
arrangement with the Palestinians as envisaged by the Mitchell
report or the Tenet plan. The current stage is further characterised
by the Israelis' decreasing reluctance to cause casualties among
Palestinian civilians. Victims are thus attacked in homes or offices
with impunity.
Extra-judicial
executions are an historical and institutional part of Israel's
political culture and ideology. Once the Palestinians are
dehumanised, it becomes possible to eliminate them, as illustrated
in a statement made by Avraham Burg, Knesset chair and candidate of
the internal primaries of Labor for chair of the party, on the 2
August episode of the American political programme Nightline. The
host asked Burg how, if Israel prides itself on being "a democratic
nation based on the rule of law," it allows its security forces to
act as jury, judge and executioner in carrying out assassinations.
Burg replied that, in the Western world, the lamb usually had a fair
chance before the wolf bit it. In the Middle East, on the other
hand, the rules were different: it was a world, he asserted, of
Islamic fundamentalists, human bombs, killers, kidnappers, "people
you do not want your daughter to marry." Because the Palestinians
are "inhuman," Burg said, the Israelis could not possibly relate to
them as, say, one Scandinavian people to another.
It is this process of
dehumanisation that seems to have reached its apogee, and that was
the driving force behind the many massacres the Zionist movement
committed in 1948, leading inexorably to the ethnic cleansing of
Palestine.
Source:
by courtesy & © 2001 Al-Ahram Weekly & Saleh Abdel-Jawad
by the same author:
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