1. Introduction

 On Thursday 9 November 2000, Hussein Abayat was killed in Beit Sahour when a missile was fired at his car by an Israeli military helicopter. The Israeli military spokesman later acknowledged that Abayat had indeed been the target of the strike, and justified the act by arguing that he had been held responsible for much of the shooting directed at the time at Gilo, a Jewish settlement located beyond the Green Line in Jerusalem.

 This precision strike opened up a new chapter in the confrontation between Palestinians and Israeli security forces. Concluding that large-scale air strikes at various Palestinian targets had not effectively deterred the upsurge of violence in the Palestinian occupied territories, the Israeli forces embarked on a new policy of pin-pointing individuals they held responsible for the attacks. For Palestinians, this new tactic amounts to an official, government-sponsored policy of assassinations. Spreading fear and suspicion among the Palestinian population, the wave of assassinations parallels a similar series of killings of collaborators who are believed to inform the Israeli authorities of the moves of “wanted” individuals, and occasionally carry out the assassinations themselves.

In fact, history seems to repeat itself. During the first intifada (1987-1993), Israel conducted numerous undercover operations against “wanted” Palestinians throughout the Palestinian territories. The stated objective of these undercover operations – by Israeli army units operating in conjunction with the General Security Service (GSS) – was to capture wanted individuals. Human rights organizations at the time noted that, in effect, the undercover units acted as “liquidation squads.”[1] This conclusion was based on three main findings: most victims had been shot numerous times, they were shot in the upper part of the body, and that arrest instead of assassination appeared to have been a viable option at the time.

After the strike against Abayat, official Israeli statements never denied that the intent was to kill him. On the contrary, Major General Yizhak Eitan praised the attack as having been carried out in a “highly professional way.”[2]

This report also investigates other cases in which the circumstances of the killings are not as clear-cut, though the Palestinian media has denounced them as assassinations.

In this report, an “assassination” will refer to the killing of a “wanted” person who was purposefully sought out by Israeli security forces. This definition assumes the existence of a list of “wanted” individuals. It is difficult to ascertain that all victims were indeed on a “wanted” list, especially in cases where Israel denies or does not acknowledge its involvement in the assassination. In some cases, it appears that the apprehension of a wanted person was not the aim of a particular movement that resulted in the death of a wanted person.  All these cases have been included in the present report.

 This policy of assassination is a blatant violation of both the right to life and the right to fair trial. In all societies bound by law, the death penalty can only be imposed by a court of law. A short legal analysis will be presented in the first part of this report. An account of the cases of alleged assassinations will then be presented. The PHRMG has attempted to gather as many testimonies as possible from witnesses or close relatives of victims, describing the events that led to the death of the victims. This version of the event is presented together with the official Israeli account of the incident, when available. It is worthwhile to mention that a number of innocent people have also been killed in the operations targeting these casualties. In addition, several individuals escaped unsuccessful assassination attempts.  In the final section of this report we provide the details of several “unclear” cases; those which could plausibly have been “work accidents” as claimed by the Israeli authorities, and those in which the source of fire is uncertain.    

One of the difficulties we faced in our research is the absence of autopsy reports, since declared “martyrs” are never autopsied, and are buried as quickly as possible. In some cases, an autopsy report might have helped clarify the circumstances of death. The research has also been obscured by the plethora of rumors circulating among the Palestinian people, especially in this current climate of fear. Past assassinations are well known and lack of credible media sources have left uninformed accounts of events circulating among the Palestinian public. Finally, an additional difficulty we had in compiling information for this report was the lack of cooperation from the Israeli Army in providing timely and informative accounts of their activities. Many of the requests we sent for a statement on an alleged case of assassination went unanswered.