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Today's
Stories
August 27, 2003
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassination Policy: the
Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Recent
Stories
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
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David Krieger
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Dave Lindorff
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Standard Schaefer
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Adam Engel
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William Mandel
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Walt Brasch
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August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
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Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
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Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
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Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
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Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
August 19, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
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Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
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Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
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David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
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David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
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Jim Lobe
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Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
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August
27, 2003
Israel's Assassination
Policy
The
Trigger for the Lastest Suicide Bombings?
By STEVE NIVA
Palestinian suicide bombings are vicious and grave
abuses, clearly war crimes under international law for intentionally
killing civilians. They have also been a strategic disaster for
Palestinian national aspirations. They have driven the Israeli
public to embrace the Israeli far right's expansionist agenda
and have severely damaged the Palestinian cause in the court
of world opinion. Nevertheless, it is nearly impossible to avoid
concluding that the current Israeli government of Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon has either deliberately provoked a number of them
or at least undertaken actions that would clearly risk them.
Either way, it is complicit in the deaths of scores of Israeli
citizens.
For how else can one explain the Israeli
decision to assassinate senior military and political leaders
from militant Palestinian groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad
during the past three months when it is well documented that
such actions frequently result in a suicide bombing, usually
within a week?
In four of the past five suicide bombings,
the timing of the bombing, the fact that group whose senior militant
was assassinated carried out the attack, and the explicit claim
of revenge for the assassination in all of these cases leave
little room for doubt about cause and effect.
The most recent atrocity in Jerusalem
on August 19, in which twenty-one Israelis were immolated on
a bus returning from Jewish holy sites, including many children
and elderly, came within four days of Israel's August 15 assassination
of Muhammed Sidr, the commander of Islamic Jihad's Quds Brigades
in Hebron. The Quds Brigades issued a statement warning that
their response would be swift "like an earthquake"
and would strike at the heart of Israel.
Islamic Jihad's immediate claim of responsibility
after the brutal bombing initially appeared to be contradicted
by a Hamas released videotape of one of its own Hebron activists,
Raed Abdel-Hamed Mesk, who undertook the attack. Yet although
Jihad and Hamas are often rivals, Mesk asserted in the video
he would carry out a suicide bombing to avenge the killing of
Sidr, who was widely reported to be a close associate at a local
mosque. Hamas spokesmen claimed it was also avenging the June
21 Israeli assassination of Abdullah Qawasmeh, Hamas' local West
Bank chief in Hebron.
The dual suicide bombings a week earlier
on August 12 near Tel Aviv and near the Israeli settlement of
Ariel in the occupied West Bank, killing two Israelis, came within
four days of Israel's August 8 assassination of Fayez Al Sadr,
head of Hamas' Qassem Brigades in the Askar refugee camp in Nablus.
Three other Palestinians were killed in the raid. Both the Qassem
Brigades and the Fatah-linked Aqsa Martyrs Brigades immediately
vowed revenge and each claimed responsibility for one of the
bombings that ensued. According to several reports, the young
bombers, both seventeen year-olds, were both from the Askar refugee
camp and had grown up within blocks of one another.
The bloody suicide bus bombing in Jerusalem
two months earlier on June 11 that killed 16 Israelis came a
day after Israel's June 10 attempted assassination of the senior
Hamas political leader in Gaza, Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, which wounded
him and killed four Palestinian civilians. Hamas had vowed a
swift and dramatic response that came earlier than many predicted.
The only exception to this pattern in
the past three months is that no assassination precipitated the
July 8 suicide bombing in the Israeli town of Kfar Yvetz that
killed an elderly Israeli woman. The Jenin branch of Islamic
Jihad claimed the attack was in response to Israel's refusal
to release Palestinian prisoners, though Islamic Jihad's official
spokesman disavowed the attack.
None of this should be surprising. Nor
should anyone believe that Israeli political and intelligence
officials who planned and implemented the assassinations were
surprised by the ensuing suicide attacks. Ariel Sharon and his
Minister of Defense Shaul Mofaz are touted as among Israel's
most acute and ruthless military tacticians, who undertake few
actions without thoroughly studying their consequences.
It would be extremely difficult to imagine
they were unaware that since the first Palestinian suicide bombing
inside Israel on April 6, 1994 following the massacre of 29 Palestinians
in Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque by the American-Israeli settler Baruch
Goldstein, many Israeli assassinations of militant commanders
have been followed by suicide bombings.
This pattern can be traced to Islamic
Jihad's first suicide bombings in 1994 and 1995 which it claimed
as responses to the Israeli assassinations of its senior and
founding leaders Hani Abed and Fathi Shiqaqi. When Hamas launched
its second bus bombing campaign in 1996 following Israel's assassination
of its bombing mastermind Yehiya Ayash, known as "the Engineer,"
the potential for such assassinations to provoke a suicide bombing
was well established.
Following the outbreak of the second
Palestinian intifada on September 29, 2000 and Israel's resumption
of a systematic assassination campaign on November 9, 2000, many
suicide bombings can be directly traced to this pattern of assassination
and revenge.
It should be noted that the majority
of the over 100 suicide bombings in the past three years cannot
be directly correlated with Israel's nearly 160 extra-judicial
assassinations undertaken during this time. But it undeniable
that, according to Palestinian sources, Israeli assassinations
have also killed over one hundred civilian bystanders in the
past three years fueling demands for revenge, and that militant
groups frequently list assassinations as a key justification
for such attacks.
But a nearly certain predictor for a
suicide bombing is when Israel assassinates a senior commander
or political leader of a militant group, especially when it does
so during or in the negotiations for a truce by these groups
on attacks on Israelis. Examples from the past few years include:
* Israel's assassination of the two
leading Hamas commanders in Nablus on July 31 2001 that put an
end to a nearly two-month Hamas cease-fire on Israeli civilians,
leading to the August 9 Hamas suicide bombing in a Jerusalem
Sbarro pizzeria.
* Israel's assassination of the senior
Hamas militant Mahmud Abu Hanoud on November 23, 2001 while Hamas
was upholding an agreement with Arafat not to attack targets
inside of Israel following the September 11 terrorist attacks
on the US, leading to the Jerusalem and Haifa Hamas suicide bombings
on December 1 and 2.
* Israel's assassination of leading
Fatah militant Raed Karmi on January 14, 2002 during a cease-fire
declared by all the militant groups in late December, leading
to the Fatah linked Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade first suicide bombing
on January 27.
* Israel's July 23, 2002 air attack
on a crowded apartment block in Gaza City that assassinated the
senior Hamas military leader, Salah Shehada, while also killing
15 civilians, 11 of them children, hours before a widely reported
unilateral cease-fire declaration by the Fatah-linked Tanzim
and Hamas, leading to the Hamas suicide bombing on August 4.
* Israel's assassination on December
26, 2002 of three prominent members from Hamas, Islamic Jihad
and Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade while representatives from Fatah,
Hamas and other factions were meeting in Cairo to formulate a
cease-fire on Israeli civilians to last through the Israeli elections
on January 28, leading to the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade suicide
bombing on January 5, 2003 that killed twenty-two Israelis.
Given this striking pattern, it was no
surprise that four out of the five recent suicide bombings came
within a week of Israel's recent assassinations or attempted
assassination of such high level militant commanders. All of
them came during or in the process of negotiating the three-month
truce against attacks on Israeli civilians that was implemented
on June 29. Palestinian militants group had very clearly stated
that they would consider Israeli assassinations to be a violation
of the truce and that they reserved the right to respond accordingly.
Moreover, one could argue that Sharon
had already undertaken nearly every action possible short of
a high level assassination to undermine Palestinian support for
the cease-fire and President Bush's Road Map process. In addition
to mass arrests and low level killings, he had refused to dismantle
Israeli settler outposts, end the siege and blockades of Palestinian
cities and towns, release a significant number of Palestinian
prisoners, or cease building a separation wall deep within the
West Bank.
The only conclusion one can draw is that
either Sharon thought it so important to kill these high level
militant leaders at this time despite the bloody consequences
for Israeli civilians or that he took these actions precisely
because he sought a violent Palestinian response. It appears
that the only thing more threatening for Ariel Sharon's government
than Palestinian terrorism is a Palestinian cease-fire.
By the same token, militant Palestinian
groups must be condemned in the strongest terms for seizing upon
Sharon's provocations through their myopic preoccupation with
revenge through suicide bombing that has brought untold misery
upon both Israelis and Palestinians. Suicide bombings against
Israeli civilians are clearly not the only option they could
undertake in response to assassinations or any other Israeli
provocation.
Palestinian militants have essentially
aligned themselves with Israel's expansionist right-wing by providing
the crucial pretext for Sharon to reoccupy and lay siege to Palestinian
population centers, seize more Palestinian land for Israeli settlements
and to build a barrier around Palestinians in the West Bank and
Gaza that traps them within tiny enclaves.
Nevertheless, based on the evidence from
the past few years, Israel's actions are of incomparably greater
significance for ending these attacks than those of Prime Minister
Abbas and what little remains of his decimated security services.
At a minimum, Israel should immediately cease its assassination
campaign. The escalation of these assassinations illustrated
by the August 22 assassination of the major Hamas spokesman Ismail
Abu Shanub in Gaza, widely seen as a Hamas moderate, is a clear
sign that the Sharon government is concerned more about its own
extremist political agenda than it is for Israeli civilian lives.
While Palestinians must do what they
can to end suicide bombings, it is past time to rethink Israel's
assassination policy. They make it impossible for Palestinian
authorities to undertake steps to reign in the militant groups
without risking a major civil war and fuel popular support for
retaliation.
Given all the carnage that can be traced
to Israel's assassination policy, the only remaining question
is why more Israelis and their supporters abroad are not in the
forefront against it.
Steve Niva
is a professor of international politics and Middle East Studies
at The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington. He is an
associate of The Middle East Research and Information Project
(merip.org) writes regularly for its magazine Middle East Report,
and has had articles published in Al-Ahram Weekly, The Jordan
Times and Peace Review. He can be reached at: nivas@evergreen.edu
Weekend
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Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
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Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
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Catherine Dong
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Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
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