Ravi Nessman
Politically Correct Murder .....
Tue Mar 23 19:33:11 2004
67.30.33.235

They could've just come out ! Left their homes, and gone away.


New Technology, Informants, Gives Teeth to Israeli Threats Against Militant Leaders

By Ravi Nessman Associated Press Writer
Published: Mar 23, 2004



JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel's threat to kill the entire leadership of the militant Hamas group is far more than bluster.
With drone planes, a web of informants and near-ubiquitous camera surveillance, the military has created a sophisticated infrastructure for tracking down and targeting top militants.

Since renewed fighting with the Palestinians broke out 3 1/2 years ago, Israel has managed to kill and wound a host of them in airstrikes.

Israel has killed more than 150 militants in targeted raids since fighting broke out in September 2000, according to Palestinian medical officials, though that total includes militants killed resisting arrest.

Israel says the targeted killings - Palestinians call them assassinations - have weakened Hamas and other militant groups, forced their surviving leaders into hiding and damaged their ability to carry out future attacks.

"These targeted killings are very effective," Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi-Farkash, Israel's military intelligence chief, told Israel's Channel Two TV.

But they are also deeply controversial, with critics calling them extrajudicial assassinations that violate international law and inspire militants to retaliate with suicide bombings.

"It is a purely emotive policy," columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in the Yediot Ahronot daily. "(The government) knows the assassinations will not curb terror, perhaps even the opposite is true, but it has no other method."o

The killings have grown increasingly sophisticated.

Israeli missiles killed Hamas leader Ismail Abu Shanab in August when his white station wagon slowed down for a speed bump on a busy Gaza City street. They destroyed a white Subaru driving between Gaza City and the Jebaliya refugee camp in a December missile strike, killing the Islamic Jihad leader Mekled Hameid.

In September, Israel shot a 550-pound bomb into a room where nearly the entire Hamas leadership, including spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin, was holding a secret meeting. The operation failed, but only because the bomb was too small.

Israel succeeded in killing Yassin on Monday, when it fired three missiles at his entourage as he left his mosque after morning prayers.

The killing proved popular with Israelis, with 60 percent approving of it in a poll published Tuesday in Yediot. However, 81 percent of Israelis believed the assassination would lead to an increase in militant attacks, according to the poll, which had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

After Yassin's assassination, Israeli security officials decided to try to kill the entire leadership of the Islamic militant group, which has carried out scores of suicide bombings against Israel, security sources said.

"It may not be tomorrow, it may not be the next day, but they definitely have the intelligence and operational capabilities to do that," said Hirsh Goodman, an analyst at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies.

Israel has Palestinian informers scattered among the militant groups, who provide instant intelligence on the movement of these leaders.

Military intelligence also uses sophisticated cameras with huge range and night vision capability to spy on nearly the entire Gaza Strip from Israeli settlements and military bases there, security officials said.

"These people know that they are targeted, and they do whatever they can to protect themselves," said Shlomo Brom, a former senior military intelligence officer. "The problem is that these people don't know the coverage of Israeli intelligence."

The sophistication of these operations has grown since the beginning of the current Palestinian uprising in 2000.

Then, targeted militants had time to flee when they heard the sound of helicopter rotors in the sky, the source said.

Now, helicopters are able to carry out strikes so swiftly and from so far away that the targets are unaware of the imminent strike, the sources said.

Israel uses high altitude, unmanned spy planes to track the targets before and during the strikes, the sources said.

Israel is also using smaller explosives to minimize civilian casualties, the sources said, a move that is not always successful.

In October, 14 Palestinians, many of them bystanders, were killed in a strike on a car in Gaza's Nusseirat refugee camp. In July 2002, 15 Palestinians died when Israel killed Hamas leader Salah Shehadeh by dropping a one-ton bomb on his house.

Israel's ability to target the Hamas leaders has also been boosted by its increased success in stopping Palestinian militant attacks, freeing it to go on the offensive, according to defense officials.

When the renewed violence started, Israel's network of Palestinian informants had atrophied following the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994.

Israel was able to stop only half of attempted attacks at the time, security officials said.

Now, Israel is armed with new informants and a partially built West Bank barrier that limits the places attackers can cross into Israel.

Security forces are stopping more than 90 percent of attempted attacks, security officials said.

The new methods have apparently had results.

The number of suicide bombings and the number of victims has dropped, with 142 Israelis killed in 22 bombings in 2003, compared to 214 killed in 53 bombings in 2002. Analysts attributed the drop to Israel's partially built West Bank barrier, beefed-up intelligence and Hamas leaders' fear of assassination.

"There are hundreds and hundreds of Israelis whose lives have been saved because of good intelligence," said Eran Lehrman, a former military intelligence officer.

• Re: Politically Correct Murder ..... — Shalom Philos, Wed Mar 24 19:14