Between 17 and 19 September, a series of large-scale pager and radio explosions in Lebanon killed around 100 people and injured thousands more. The dead included civilians and children. Since most of the victims of these unprecedented attacks were Hezbollah members, and since the incidents took place mainly in Hezbollah-controlled areas, such as the southern suburbs of Beirut, South Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, both Hezbollah and the Lebanese government were almost unanimous in their view that these attacks were an organised Israeli telecommunications attack.
Following the resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Lebanese conflicts, Hezbollah leaders warned that Israeli intelligence had infiltrated Lebanese smartphone networks. Hezbollah members then began using older, low-tech communication devices, often to avoid detection of their location. According to the Associated Press, non-military institutions such as Hezbollah-affiliated schools, hospitals and aid organisations were among those using such equipment.
Although Israel has traditionally maintained a ‘neither confirm nor deny’ stance, the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has led most observers to conclude that the technologically powerful Israel has infiltrated the supply chain of communications equipment and detonated pre-planted micro-bombs, taking its policy of ‘targeted killing’ to the level of war. This is seen as a move to retaliate against and deter Hezbollah.
If this is the case, it means that Israel is innovating, expanding and increasing the severity of its ‘targeted killing’ policy, which has been in place for years. By turning consumer products, especially communications devices, into weapons of mass destruction, it is further violating the laws of war, international law and humanitarian principles, and setting a bad precedent by opening a new Pandora’s box for international conflict.
Why is ‘targeted killing’ so common?
As a small country with a small population, Israel has historically favoured pre-emptive strikes and quick results. As protracted conflicts have cost Israel dearly in human and material terms, the government has been forced to use as much or more force than the other side to end conflicts. For years, Israelis lived in disarray, suffered discrimination and massacres, and the country was in a constant state of war. The consciousness of fear and crisis has become an inescapable psychological shadow, even an important feature of the national character. Decades of tense confrontation and the threat of violence have led most Israelis to regard security as the supreme value and to an extreme egocentric mentality: ‘I would rather betray the world than let the world betray me’. These factors constitute the revenge motivation behind Israel’s long-standing policy of ‘targeted killings’ and the social basis for its acceptance by most Israelis.
The policy of targeted killings reflects the consistency and relative rationality of the Israeli government’s strategy against its enemies. Internally, it can comfort victims of attacks and prevent potential threats; externally, it can ease international pressure under the pretext of ‘fighting terrorism’. In this way, it can prevent a full-scale escalation or expansion of the conflict, avoid large-scale humanitarian disasters, reduce public criticism and weaken anti-Israeli sentiment by dividing and fragmenting the enemy front. It also has the effect of deterring, dispersing and crippling the organisational structure of enemy extremist groups.
Why is ‘targeted killing’ often successful?
Israel’s methods of targeted killing are varied. They include air-to-ground missile strikes, sniper rifles, tank attacks, and the placement of remote-controlled bombs in cars, telephone booths, concrete barriers and even mobile phones. Despite occasional failures, Israel’s military intelligence units are generally able to act in a stable, precise and effective manner, seeking to minimise collateral damage. The international community is now convinced that Israel has enabled the mass and targeted detonation of micro-explosives pre-planted in pagers, radios and even solar panels. This shows that the policy of ‘targeted killing’ has not stopped over time, but has evolved.
The fact that the policy of ‘targeted killings’ is so widespread and often successful is mainly due to the following factors:
First, Israel has overwhelming overall power. Having been in a state of war for a long time, Israel’s military and intelligence services are always on high alert. Not only is it the military superpower of the entire Middle East, it is also world class in terms of equipment, technology, communications, quality of troops, quality of training and combat experience. When it comes to ‘execution’ targets, it is like using a sledgehammer to kill a sparrow. The ‘execution’ operations themselves are not only diverse, but also have a very high technological content.
Secondly, Israel’s military or intelligence services prepare in advance by planting bombs on the equipment used by the targets and detonating them by remote control if necessary. Placing remote-controlled bombs in payphones, mobile phones, telephone booths, road barriers and even fake gifts and detonating them at the appropriate time is a common method of Israeli bombing.
Thirdly, killing and bombing from a distance with tanks, helicopters, drones, rocket launchers or sniper rifles, taking advantage of asymmetry in equipment capabilities.
Fourth, approaching the target disguised as enemy civilians and carrying out the attack.
Another important factor in the success of ‘targeted killing’ is that a large number of informants act as collaborators, providing sensitive information or equipment such as mobile phones and cars to Israel’s military intelligence units. Israel’s methods of recruiting informants include blackmail, bribery and work permits. This forces some Palestinians, Lebanese or Iranians who are weak-willed and in financial difficulties to betray their national interests. According to some intelligence reports, the ‘targeted killing’ of Hamas leader Haniyeh in Tehran by Israeli intelligence was carried out by a bought insider who tracked, positioned and planted explosives beforehand.
At one point, the Israeli government referred to the extrajudicial killing as ‘liquidation’; it later changed the term to ‘targeted killing’. Even this definition is not sufficiently clear, but for the most part it has been described as ‘active defence’ and rejected by the international and local left-wing media as ‘assassination’. But whatever the name, it was clear that such acts did not change some facts that fit the basic characteristics of assassination: the unlawful killing of an accused person without legal process, the ending of a life without direct confrontation and at a moment when the target has no chance to defend himself, and usually either denial or silence about these acts.
More than 20 years ago, the Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (ICHROT), a group of Israeli parliamentarians, lawyers and journalists, stated in a report that assassination had been part of Israel’s policy of killing prominent Palestinian figures for more than 30 years, and was not a new practice that emerged after the Al-Aqsa Intifada. This was indeed the case.
When Brigadier General Benny Gantz, the Israeli army commander in the West Bank at the time, was asked if there was a ‘cleansing policy’, he replied: ‘You said cleansing, not me. We will do whatever is necessary and we will not stop similar operations as long as there is a threat. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper al-Hayat, Rami Golzin, one of the founders of the special forces, admitted: ‘We are carrying out purges. If we had not liquidated Abu Jihad (in 1988) or other targets that needed to be liquidated, our buses would have been blown up and 17 of our sons would have been killed’.
Initially, Israeli military intelligence announced that it had ‘liquidated’ certain individuals after the assassination operations had ended. Later, however, they adopted a policy of silence, neither confirming nor denying these activities. One practice that did not change, however, was the practice of listing the ‘crimes’ of the assassination targets. Israeli military intelligence stated that the assassinations were carried out to prevent terrorist attacks by the targets. This was a typical ‘execute first, judge later’ approach.
Human rights violations and condemnation
ICHROT stressed that Israel’s assassination policy violates the right to life of the targets and contravenes fundamental principles of international and Israeli law. The most critical aspect of this policy is that an organisation or an individual can take the decision to kill another person without legal justification and carry it out without judicial approval. In addition, the ‘accused’ is often unaware of the charges against him or her and, even if accused, has no opportunity to defend himself or herself.
The organisation said that Israel’s assassination policy was intended to retaliate for Palestinian ‘terrorist attacks’ against Israeli targets or to punish those who organised them. However, these operations were often based on dubious and flawed intelligence, leading the Israeli army to act too easily, abusing its power and harming innocent people. On numerous occasions, Israeli ‘targeted killings’ have resulted in the deaths of large numbers of civilians, including innocent family members of those targeted for assassination.
Another major problem was that the policy of ‘targeted killings’ made military operations unlimited. If it is possible to kill Palestinians or Lebanese suspected of attacking Israelis, what about potential attackers? What about people of any nationality, especially citizens of Middle Eastern countries, who only verbally express support for attacks on Israeli targets? According to Israeli logic, they are all potential terrorists.
Prof Ma is Dean of the Institute of Mediterranean Studies (ISMR) at Zhejiang International Studies University (Hangzhou). He specialises in international politics, particularly Islam and Middle East politics. He worked for many years as a senior Xinhua correspondent in Kuwait, Palestine and Iraq.
