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Explaining Israel's Misuse of Strategic Assassinations

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 30; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10576100701329584

1521-0731

Or Honig,

Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts

Abstract This study explains Israel's insufficiently discriminate use of strategic assassinations during the last two decades. It shows that the tool's misuse considerably diminished its overall contribution to Israel's national security. It identifies five dimensions of systematic misuse: timing, political views of the targets, organizational affiliation, domestic political consequences for the adversary, and the visibility of Israel's responsibility. It finds three clusters of causes for these patterns of misuse: a flawed decision-making culture, the prevalence of false causal stories, and the pernicious effect of norms. This study could not find evidence for a direct link between domestic political pressures to any systematic pattern of misuse. Notes 1. Gal Luft, “The Logic of Israel's Targeted Killing,” Middle East Quarterly 10(1) (Winter 2003), pp. 3–13; Nadav Morag, “Measuring Success in Coping with Terrorism: The Israeli Case,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 28 (July–August 2005), pp. 307–320; Mohammed Hafez and Joseph Hatfield, “Do Targeted Assassinations Work? A Multivariate Analysis of Israel's Controversial Tactic during Al-Aqsa Uprising,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 29(4) (June 2006), pp. 359–382. 2. See, for example, Edward Kaplan, Alex Mintz, Shaul Mashal, and Claudio Sabman, “What Happened to Suicide Bombings in Israel? Insights from a Terror Stock Model,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 28(3) (May–June 2005), pp. 225–235. 3. Realism assumes that statesmen think and act in terms of interest defined as power, and therefore seek to maximize national power at the expense of other nations. For the classical realist perspective see Hans Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 6th edition (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1985), pp. 5, 31. 4. For examples of the ongoing debates in academia about the tool's ethical appropriateness and legality see Steven R. David, “Israel's Policy of Targeted Killing,” Ethics & International Affairs 17(1) (April 2003), pp. 111–126; Yael Stein, “By Any Name illegal and Immoral.” (Response to “Israel's Policy of Targeted Killing”) Ethics & International Affairs 17(1) (April 2003), pp. 127–139; David Kretzmer, “Targeted Killing of Suspected Terrorists: Extra-Judicial Executions or Legitimate Means of Defence?,” European Journal of International Law 16(2) (April 2005), pp. 171–212. 5. By using the term assassinations the author does not mean to negate the connotation of murder by “treacherous means” however the moral aspect is not dealt with in this study. 6. See, for example, the report of Human Rights Watch of 2003—Israel and the Palestinian Authority, p. 461, available at (http://www.hrw.org/wr2k3/pdf/isotpa.pdf). 7. The most notable exception is the killing of Salah Shehadeh by bombing a building in a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza. 8. To name just a few examples, the killing of Abd al Aziz Rantisi, Shaykh Ahmad Yassin, Abbas Mussawi, and Ali Hasan Salameh (the “Red Prince”) all followed this pattern of targeting the terrorists’ vehicles to minimize collateral damage to civilians. 9. The initial ratio was 28 civilians killed for every terrorist, whereas in 2006 the ratio has declined to one civilian killed for every citizen. Dan Margalit, Moetzet Hakhahamim, Channel 10—Israeli TV, 17 June 2006. 10. Zeev Schiff and Ehud Yaari, Intifada (Tel Aviv: Shoken, 1990), pp. 159–160. (in Hebrew). 11. Ibid. 12. See, for example, Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), chapter 6. 13. For instance, in Camp David, Arafat was the one who always wanted more than the other negotiators. Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace (New York: Farrar Strauss & Giroux, 2004), pp. 65–711 14. David Samuels, “In a Ruined Country: How Yasir Arafat Destroyed Palestine,” The Atlantic Monthly (September 2005). Online version available at (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200509/samuels). 15. Ibid. 16. Abu Jihad was less centralistic than Arafat and allowed for some initiative for local inhabitants of the territories in the Intifada. Rubin and Rubin, Arafat, p. 122. 17. Steven David, “Fatal Choices: Israel's Policy of Targeted Killing,” BESA memorandum on Middle East Security and Policy Studies no. 51 (September 2002), p. 10 18. Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel's Secret Wars (New York: Widenfeld, 1991), p. 471. 19. An interview with Shlomo Gazit, Panim 3 (October 1997), p. 24 (in Hebrew). 20. Raviv Drucker and Ofer Shelah, Boomerang: The Failure of the Israeli Leadership During the Second Intifada (Tel Aviv: Yediot Ahronot, 2005), p. 151. 21. Ibid., pp. 166–167. 22. Ibid., pp.170–171. 23. Moshe Arens, Broken Covenant (Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot, 1995), pp. 292–293 (in Hebrew). 24. It was widely known at the time that the Hizbullah network had grassroot support, used mainly as a source of funds, in the area of the Triple border of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. Benjamin Feinberg, Sarah Merek, and Snaidauf, “Hizbullah: Transnational Crime and Terrorism.” A lecture delivered at American University, 20 December 2005, pp. 18–19. 25. According to the poll conducted by Dr. Nabil Kukali from the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion in 13–18 July 2005, the average score that Abbas was given for his performance as a President was 5.5 out of 10 (1 being the lowest). 26. Khaled Hroub, “Hamas After Shaykh Yasin and Rantisi,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Summer 2004), pp. 21–38. 27. Drucker and Shelah, Boomerang, p. 161. 28. For the political dimensions of the Mashal crisis, see Efraim Halevy, Man in the Shadows (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006), chapter 10. 29. Daniel Byman, “Do Targeted Killings Work?” Foreign Affairs (March–April 2006). 30. Mark Urban, Big Boys' Rules: The Secret Struggle against the IRA (London: Faber and Faber, 1992). 31. See the article of the IDF head of the International law department Colonel Pnina Sharvit Baruch and the assistant to the national Security Adviser, Major Gabriella Blum, “The Legal Framework Applicable to Fighting Terrorism,” in The Limited Conflict 327, Hagai Golan and Shaul Shai, eds. (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defence, 2004). 32. See the vague press release by CENTCOM, John Hestler, “Saddam Hussein’s Sons Killed in Operations,” 22 July 2003. See CENTCOM website (http://www.centcom.mil/sites/uscentcom1/Lists/Press%20Releases/DispForm.aspx?ID=789). 33. Arens, Broken Covenant, pp. 292–293. 34. Ben Kaspit, “The War Room—The True Story: How Decisions about Targeted Killings are Really Being Made,” Maariv, 7 January 2005. 35. Personal interview with Uzi Dayan, 23 April 2006. Ramat Gan. 36. The author could not find any indications of such long-term thinking in the newspapers at the time nor in the seminal work of Schiff and Yaari on the Intifada. 37. Uri Bar Joseph, “Don't Let Them Estimate: Why the IDF Should Not Be Responsible for Political Intelligence,” Maarachot, No. 328 (January–February 1993), pp. 38–45. (Hebrew) 38. Eliot A. Cohen, “Change and Transformation in Military Affairs,” Journal of Strategic Studies 27(3) (September 2004), pp. 395–407. 39. See for example, Noam Ophir, “Threading a Missile through a Window,” IAF Journal 108 (April 1996), pp. 10–15. (in Hebrew); Shmuel Gordon, The Vulture and the Snake: Counter Guerilla Air Warfare. BESA Center, Bar Ilan University—Mideast Security and Policy Studies 39 (July 1998), chapter 3. 40. Author's interview with Tzvi Ben Mosheh, the policy adviser for the late Minister of Defense, Yitzhak Rabin, in the 1980s. Tel Aviv, 8 May 2006. 41. The interviewee preferred to remain unnamed. 42. Deborah Stone, “Causal Stories and the Formation of Policy Agendas,” Political Science Quarterly 104(2) (1989), pp. 281–282. 43. Avi Dichter, a lecture delivered at a conference “Fighting Islamic Terrorists,” Brookings Institution, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, 8 December 2005, pp. 5–8. 44. Brian M. Jenkins, Should Our Arsenal Against Terrorism Include Assassinations? (Santa Monica, CA: The Rand Corporation, 1987), pp. 4–5. 45. The regional leaders were: Amad Bader, Abduallah Qawasmeh, Ali Alan, Abd Halek Natche, and Jamil Jadallah. Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 14 September 2003. 46. Ibid., p. 295. 47. Significantly, during Dichter's tenure in office, the SHBAK research center has significantly declined in comparison to its status during the tenure of his predecessor, Ami Ayalon. The top Middle East expert, Dr. Matti Steinberg, lost his prominent position under Dichter. Drucker and Shelah, Boomerang, p. 154. 48. Shelah and Drucker, Boomerang, p. 164. Notably, although terrorism was plummeting by the end of 2003, it was not clear whether the assassinations contributed to this effect. Some have claimed that it was the accumulated result of the IDF presence in Palestinian cities, multiple arrests, and the IDF's seizures and closures policy. 49. Gadi Blum, Yadiot Tikshoret, 1 February, 2002; Shelah and Drucker, Boomerang, p. 156 50. Amos Harel, “Overcaution in Assasinations cost Israelis’ lives,” Haaretz, 1 June, 2005. 51. For an example of his self- criticism see his speech delivered at the third Annual Hertzliyah conference for National Security in December 2003. 52. John Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies (Boston: Little Brown, 1984), pp. 153–157. 53. Quoted in Shlomo Gazit, Trapped Fools (London: Frank Cass, 2003), p. 54. 54. For instance, Israel escalated its attacks, and bombarded the power stations in Beirut several times, the most notable being the attacks in June 1999 and on 14 July 2006. In the recent events of mid-July 2006, Israel also bombed Nasrallah's house. 55. Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence and Coexistence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), chapter 2. The best example for the Hamas's order of priorities is the relative restraint of the Hamas government during 2006. 56. Steven David, “Fatal Choices,” p. 13. 57. Ward Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction: Norms and Force in International Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 60–62. 58. Zeev Schiff and Ehud Yaa’ri, Intifada (Tel Aviv: Shoken, 1990), p. 160. (in Hebrew). 59. Interview with Gazit, p. 22. 60. Arens, Broken Covenant, p. 292. 61. This refers to the formative experience of the Israeli raids in response to the Fadayeen attacks in the 1950s.