The occupation assassinated these leaders (from right): Sheikh Yassin, Al-Wazir, Al-Shaqaqi, and Moussawi (communication sites)

Since the beginning of the aggression against Gaza, Israel has intensified its assassination operations against leaders and cadres of Palestinian resistance organizations, the Lebanese Hezbollah, as well as Iranian military and intelligence leaders in Syria.

The assassinations were not limited to field leaders inside Gaza and the West Bank, but rather went beyond them to include political and military leaders abroad, led by Saleh Al-Arouri, deputy head of the political bureau of Hamas, and his companions, in addition to leaders in Hezbollah and the Quds Force.

Israel's return to a policy of assassinations - in light of the war on Gaza - opens the door to an attempt to identify the assassination strategy and the extent of the occupation's reliance on it to achieve "security claims."

History of Israeli assassinations

Oldrich Boris and Andrew Hawkins - in a study they co-wrote entitled “Israeli Targeted Killings Before and During the Second Intifada: A Contextual Comparison” - argue that the first Israeli assassinations after the establishment of the occupying state occurred in 1956.

This was a simultaneous operation that targeted Mustafa Hafez, the Egyptian military intelligence officer in the Gaza Strip, and Salah Mustafa, the Egyptian military attaché in Jordan, “in retaliation for their role in supporting the Palestinian guerrillas.”

This reflects the continuation of the occupying state’s policy of assassinations adopted by the Zionist gangs before 1948, as happened in the Stern gang’s assassination of Lord Moyne, the British Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs in 1944, and Count Falke Bernadotte, the UN envoy to the Palestinian issue.

The policy of assassinations extended over decades to include a large list of leaders of the Liberation Organization, Palestinian factions, and Hezbollah, and many figures believed to have some role in supporting the Palestinian cause and resistance, even from non-Palestinians.

Israel used several methods of implementation, including parcel bombs, pistols equipped with silencers, car bombs, snipers, toxic chemicals, suffocation, drones, and even aerial bombardment with huge bombs to ensure the complete destruction of the target.

Between Mossad and the army

The Israeli Foreign Intelligence Service (Mossad) played the most prominent role in assassination operations even before the Second Intifada, as most of the operations took place outside Palestine during the period extending from 1956 to 1999.

But after the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000, most of the assassinations were carried out in Gaza and the West Bank, and the role of the occupation army and the Internal Security Service (Shin Bet) in their implementation became prominent.

Before the second intifada, Israeli assassination operations focused almost exclusively on eliminating senior leaders of the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance factions or cadres who possessed specific skills. This has changed since 2000 to include the liquidation of middle leaders and fighting elements with the aim of stopping the momentum of the uprising.

According to a study published by Simon Pratt dealing with “the development of the logic of the Israeli assassination policy during the Al-Aqsa Intifada,” the occupation carried out 134 assassination operations that killed 367 people during the period between October 2000 and July 2007.

In 2002, Israel resorted to legally legislating assassinations in a world-wide precedent, while setting controls to which it did not adhere to much, such as that arresting the targeted person is not practically possible, not carrying out assassinations inside Israel, and adhering to the principle of proportionality in carrying out the assassination to avoid causing Collateral damage, and requiring the approval of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense.

Motives for assassinations

Israel has adopted a policy of assassinations to achieve several goals that vary according to the diversity of the targeted individuals, the most prominent of which are:

  • Retaliation and strengthening deterrence by conveying the message that it has a long hand that can reach anyone who works against it, and that it does not forget or forgive those who killed Israelis.

  •  Raising the morale of the Israelis and spite their opponents, and deepening their feeling that their government is repelling threats from them, and harming everyone who threatens their security.

  • Weakening the effectiveness of the resistance factions by putting the effective leaders and cadres under the pressure of targeting at any time, which is reflected in the tightening of their security measures, which usually reduces their area of ​​movement and communication, and limits their effectiveness.

  • Depriving the resistance of talented characters who possess abilities and skills that have been accumulated over time and cannot be easily transferred to others.

  • In some cases, betting on weakening the groups whose leaders were assassinated, by creating a gap that may lead to internal disputes and divisions after the absence of the charismatic leader around whom the rest rally.

  • Raising the cost of participating in the resistance against the occupation with the aim of intimidating society and pushing it away from what would bring retaliatory Israeli reactions.

Strategic failure

When we examine the Israeli approach to assassinations, we find that it gives priority to tactical considerations, while it often has negative strategic effects on the occupation, which can be illustrated with several examples.

The assassination of Abbas al-Musawi, Secretary General of Hezbollah, in 1992, by bombing his car and his family, did not deter the party or lead to its disintegration or undermine its decision-making circle. Rather, it contributed to the rise of a young leader at the time, Hassan Nasrallah, who was able to transform the party into a number Influential in the Lebanese scene and the regional environment.

On the other hand, the assassination led to a bloody reaction from the party, as it retaliated by bombing the Israeli embassy building in the Argentine capital, killing 29 people, and followed it up by bombing a Jewish community building there, killing 85 people.

In the Palestinian context, the assassination of Yahya Ayyash - by blowing up his cell phone in early 1996 - did not lead to the destruction of the military capabilities of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement. On the contrary, Ayyash turned into an icon of Palestinian resistance.

Al-Qassam developed its security and military capabilities, in addition to retaliating for the assassination of Ayyash by carrying out 4 bombings two months after his assassination, which resulted in the killing of 60 Israelis and the wounding of hundreds. This brought back to the scene the pattern of martyrdom operations that had stopped about a full year before the assassination, and proved that Israel does not have The upper hand, and as it strikes, it strikes.

In the same context, the assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa, Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, on August 27, 2001, prompted members of his organization to take revenge less than two months later by assassinating Rehavam Ze’evi, the Israeli Minister of Tourism and the extremist political figure, in the hotel where he was staying, as part of Head-to-head policy.

Likewise, the assassination of senior Hamas leaders Ismail Abu Shanab, Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi, and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin - at a close time in less than one year - did not lead to the collapse of the movement’s political leadership, or to the strengthening of the Palestinian Authority at the expense of the resistance factions prior to the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

These assassinations strengthened the image of Hamas as a resistance movement whose leaders and members were martyred in confrontations, which contributed to its victory in the 2006 elections, which ultimately led to Hamas taking control of the entire Gaza Strip in 2007, achieving the opposite of what the Israeli leadership wanted.

Direct threats

The Israeli policy of assassinations has led in some cases to the dismantling of small Palestinian organizations such as “Black September,” but it has not succeeded in dismantling groups that have extensions in society that allow for the inclusion of new members and the rapid escalation of talented and qualified people to compensate for the loss of leaders, as is the case with Hamas in Palestine or Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman concludes in his encyclopedic book, “Arise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israeli Targeted Assassinations,” that the policy of assassinations succeeded in removing specific direct threats but failed to generate a long-term solution to the Israeli security dilemma, and proved that it is not a practical alternative to negotiations and settlement.

These operations indicate that Israeli decision-makers - who tend to think about the immediate, short-term gains achieved by assassinations without considering the broader strategic context and the lessons of history - believe that the justice of the cause and the presence of a popular incubator for resistance lead to the transformation of assassinated leaders into symbols of the struggle, and they also constantly push To renew blood and the strength of resistance.

Source: Al Jazeera