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Israeli 'Targeted Killings' in Spotlight

JERUSALEM - Israel calls them targeted killings, attacks using pinpoint accuracy to liquidate Palestinians preparing terror attacks on Israeli civilians. Palestinians say Israeli missile strikes are crude assassinations carried out in crowded streets that often kill the innocent.

Israeli missile attacks that killed 20 Palestinians in three days — more than half of them civilians — have reopened debate over the morality, effectiveness and political wisdom of Israel's strategy.

Israel considers the strikes a prime tool in its effort to destroy Palestinian militant groups, but critics say the assassinations have done little to stop terror.

"This is immoral, totally ineffective and it doesn't fit a democracy," said Yossi Beilin, the former justice minister who opposed the policy when it was adopted in November 2000. "These assassinations are capital punishment without trial."

An Israeli police explosives expert searches a bus destroyed by a suspected Palestinian suicide bomber in Jerusalem June 11, 2003. The blast killed at least 13 people and injured more than 60 on a bus in Jerusalem Wednesday, a day after an Israeli assassination attempt against a militant leader.

Relatives of Bat-El Ohana carry her coffin during her funeral in the cemetery of Kiryat Atta, near the northern city of Haifa, Israel, Thursday, June 12, 2003. Ohana, 21, was one of 16 people killed in Wednesday's bus bombing in Jerusalem.

Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin attends the funeral of nine people killed during Israeli helicopter strikes in Gaza June 12, 2003. The U.S. accused the militant Hamas on Thursday of being the major obstacle to Middle East peace amid a wave of bloodshed that has thrown a U.S.-backed peace plan into turmoil. 'The issue is Hamas. The terrorists are Hamas,' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters traveling with President George W. Bush to Connecticut.

Palestinians pray next to nine bodies at Gaza City's al-Omari mosque