Posted on 11/10/2001 8:30:35 AM PST by l33t
They have blown up cars and kitchens. They have fired missiles from combat helicopters hovering several miles away. They have picked off their victims from afar with high-powered snipers' rifles. There are even plausible claims that they – or their collaborators – have planted explosive devices in telephone receivers and car headrests that blow off a man's head in an instant.
Israel's death squads have not lacked ingenuity in the manner in which they have pursued their government's policy of assassinating suspects in the 14-month war with the Palestinians.
Exactly a year has elapsed since Israel first restored extra-judicial killings to its repertoire of military tactics in its efforts to suppress what began as a popular uprising, turning slowly into an armed conflict.
The exact numbers of the victims vary – the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who personally approves all such killings, admitted to 20 to 30 in a recent Newsweek interview. But he has stated in the past that Israel will sometimes deny its undercover operations, and refuse to comment on others.
There is little doubt the figure is larger. Statistics collated by the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG) show that at least 59 Palestinians have been assassinated in the past year, including 21 passers-by. Even this may be an underestimate.
The international community has repeatedly condemned the killings, saying they are illegal and that, in the long run, they increase violent resistance to Israel's occupation.
Human rights groups have raised many urgent concerns, from the manner in which Israeli intelligence selects targets – which is not open to scrutiny by any judiciary – to evidence that some victims could have been arrested, instead of killed.
"State enforcement of a policy of assassinations is in direct contravention of international human rights law, and especially of the right to life and the right to fair trial," a statement from the PHRMG said yesterday, "People suspected of illegal activities must be arrested and brought to trial, even in a situation of armed conflict."
But Israel has continued. It argues they are pre-emptive strikes against attacks on Israelis – notably suicide bombers, who have killed 56 people in Israel since this intifada began. It makes no secret of its methods – Mr Sharon boasted this week that "not a day goes by in which we do not succeed in striking at the murderers".
On 8 November last year, in Beit Sahour, a Palestinian town on the edge of Bethlehem, Israeli combat helicopters blasted missiles into a pick-up truck. They got their man – Hussein Abayat, 34, a gunman from Fatah, the movement nominally controlled by the Pales-tinian leader, Yasser Arafat.
Posters of Abayat in paramilitary fatigues posing with a large machine-gun still adorn the walls of Bethlehem, where he – like all Israel's victims – is considered a martyr. But the assassins also killed two middle-aged women who happened to be passing, murders that did not discourage the Israel army from congratulating itself on a successful "targeted killing". A monument to the two woman stands where they died.
But the most notorious assassination came at the end of August when Israeli helicopters hovering over the West Bank town of Ramallah fired two missiles through the windows of the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abu Ali Mustafa, 64, decapitating him as he sat in his swivel chair. As the leader of an established PLO faction – who according to Palestinians was a politician rather than a member of the PFLP's military wing – he was the most senior figure to be picked off by the Israelis.
Seven weeks later, the PFLP sought revenge, by infiltrating a Jerusalem hotel and assassinating Israel's Tourism Minister, Rechavem Zeevi, whose support for ethnically cleansing the West Bank and Gaza of Arabs had long made him an enemy of the Palestinians.
Israel's counter-attack – the largest invasion of Palestinian-run areas in West Bank towns since the Oslo process began – is still unfinished; Israeli troops were still in Jenin and Tulkarm last night. The evidence suggests Israel will now step up the pace of extra-judicial killings.
The pressure from the United States has diminished, not least because America will surely resort to similar tactics in its "war on terror". This week, Raanan Gissin, a spokes-man for Mr Sharon, said Israel will now "be using, when necessary, guerrilla warfare against terrorism rather than large-scale forces moving into the area ... We'll rely more on [military] intelligence." Even Shimon Peres, the Israeli Foreign Minister, who is routinely portrayed in the press as a Nobel peace prize-winning "dove", makes no apology for Israel's methods.
This week Mr Peres was confronted in Paris by a parliamentarian who questioned him over the "murder of Palestinian activists". He retorted that the French had "no experience" of "suicide terrorist attacks", saying that the "the moment a terrorist sets out, it is impossible to stop him. He is ready to die anyway."
But this is unlikely to silence Israel's critics. They say that, in the case of many victims, there was no evidence that they were on a mission to attack Israelis, let alone that they were suicide bombers.
Huh?
Yeah. Those strange people bowing towards Arabia.
I can't wait!
How about a photograph or a cedible eyewitness
Plenty of references on the web to UFO's, flat Earth, etc as well.
"...The results were lethal. Fifteen residents of the camp were killed, including a number of women and children. At the summary of the mission, a number of men voiced their reservations: 'Are a few hundred miserable refugees, including women and children, our real enemy?' they asked incredulously. Arik replied, 'The women are the whores of the Arab infiltrators who have been attacking our civilians. If we don't act forcefully against the refugee camps they will turn into comfortable nests for murderers.'"
From the diary of Moshe Sharett.
In response you people make infantile jokes.
The 1953 Kibya raid was part of an Israeli government policy to respond to deadly terrorist raids by "fedayeen" terrorists sponsored by neighboring Jordan and Egypt. Hundreds of Israeli civilians had been killed, and the government responded by sending Sharon's 101 Unit to hit the fedayeen, the army bases that supported them, and the villages that housed them. As the force approached the village, hundreds of Kibya residents were seen fleeing. The force believed that all residents had fled. According to the official IDF Encyclopedia, the soldiers found a young girl in one house and an elderly man in another. They were quickly chased away. Soonafter, IDF sappers blew up dozens of Kibya houses. No one knew that 69 civilians were hiding inside the homes. Their deaths were not deliberate.To connect Sharon's actions as Prime Minister to those of a young IDF officer is unfair and misleading. Israeli-caused civilian casualties during those raids 50 years ago were not intentional -- though Arab attacks on Israelis were.
If this were true then why has he refused till now to amend the Palestinian Covenent which clearly promotes the destruction of Israel.
You mean that European and Israeli journalists are honest, unlike the American? They have this strange habit of doing things like using the term death squad to describe death squads.
Regardless of who owns it - it was territory from which a war against Israel was launched in 1967. As a result of that war Israel occupied it and as such it is currently a disputed territory. To date Israel has allowed the Palestinian Authority full administrative rights over 42% of the land and 97% of the Arab population.
If the Arab population wants autonomy and a state they will have to negotiate a deal with Israel - negotiating a deal doesn't mean you get 100% of what you want. Israel has certain requirements as well, not the least being the right to national survival.
The deal Arafat wants is 100% or it's no deal. The deal Barak and Clinton offered and that he walked away from wasn't a take it or leave it proposal but a step towards a negotiating positioin. Arafat never came back with a counter proposal other that to start the intifada.
And what "law" would you be referring to.
Perhaps the "law of the jungle", how about the "law of possession".
The land belongs to people who were driven out of their homes and have been forced to spend 50 years in refugee camps. The government of Israel itself acknowledges this fact.
That's what your argument always comes down to, doesn't it? Might is Right.
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