Headlines

MIDEAST: Dispute Grows over ‘Targeted Killings’

Ferry Biedermann

GAZA, Oct 25 2003 (IPS) - Israelis and Palestinians are both facing up to long-term consequences of Monday’s air strikes on the Gaza strip.
     Initial reports of a large death toll with mostly civilian casualties drew protests even among some ministers in the hard-line government. The army staunchly defended its actions.

Israelis and Palestinians are both facing up to long-term consequences of Monday’s air strikes on the Gaza strip.

Initial reports of a large death toll with mostly civilian casualties drew protests even among some ministers in the hard-line government. The army staunchly defended its actions.

Monday’s strikes were unprecedented in that they followed one another rapidly within a 12-hour period. One attack on a car carrying militants in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the Gaza strip caused many casualties.

The strikes have again fuelled a debate over ‘targeted assassinations’ of Palestinian militants that Israel suspects is planning attacks against its citizens. It came at a sensitive time because some 30 air force pilots signed a letter last month refusing to carry out such missions.

The Gaza strip is a densely packed coastal area where some 1.3 million Palestinians live within an Israeli security fence. In the days preceding the air strikes militant groups had lobbed improvised rockets, the so-called Kassam-2 missiles, at Israeli towns outside the strip.

In Sajjiyjeh neighbourhood in Gaza City where the first Israeli strike came Monday morning, a half-finished building belonging to a known Hamas member had attracted the usual crowd of onlookers. Consistent with Israeli army reports later, a van with masked men had turned up at this building. The army claims the men transferred an arms cache to another warehouse.

Later in the day the army hit the van, killing two militants and a passer-by. In follow-up strikes the air force also attacked the first target again, as well as the warehouse the arms were believed to have been taken to. These attacks caused no fatalities.

More problematic is the strike inside the crowded Nuseirat refugee camp, which is in effect not a camp but a warren of narrow lanes and concrete houses bisected by a main street.

Eyewitnesses said two people inside the car were killed in this attack along with at least five others who happened to be in the street at the time. Dozens of people were injured.

Just under an hour after the attack, a crowd of angry young Palestinians gathered around the wreck of a silver-grey Peugeot 504 in Nuseirat’s main street. They called for revenge.

"Look, from the martyr," said a young boy no more than 12 years old, holding up a piece of what appeared to be charred flesh. The situation got quickly out of hand. The demonstrators turned their anger on outsiders, also journalists, despite the presence of Palestinian police.

The next day residents were preparing to bury their dead. Nine-year old Moustafa Tabaza stood with his father outside his home while masked Hamas militants armed with axes, knives and spray cans painted slogans on a wall opposite the house praising the ‘martyrs’.

Moustafa’s 23-year old brother Abdelhalim had been killed in the explosion, and two brothers and two cousins wounded. "When I grow up, I will join Hamas to take revenge for my brother," Moustafa said quietly.

He had heard a loud explosion the day earlier and rushed to the end of an alleyway near the site of the blast. Three of his brothers and some cousins were also in the vicinity of the car that the missile missed but damaged.

The Israeli army released a videotape intended to show that few people were in the street at the time of the attack.

"The car must have been packed with explosives because our missiles do not have such an impact, as you can see from the first explosion," an Israeli army spokeswoman said.

She said the civilian deaths were regrettable, but blamed the militants. "We do everything to avoid the loss of innocent life but when the terrorists hide among the civilian population and carry explosives with them, it becomes their responsibility."

This attack led a minister of the centre-right Shinui party in the coalition of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to remark that it was better to let militants go than to target them amidst a civilian population.

"The failure to differentiate between civilians and terrorists turns all the Palestinians into potential suicide bombers," infrastructure minister Yosef Paritzky said. He urged the army to compensate innocent victims.

Military intelligence commander Major-General Aharon Ze’evi came up with the more hardline view.áá"It’s preferable for Palestinian mothers to cry than Israeli mothers," he said.

The Israeli army looks set to continue to target suspects among the civilian population despite the internal debate.