Peter S. Green
Israeli officials have confirmed their intention to wage a campaign of targeted assassinations against Hamas leaders around the world, with the latest affirmation coming from Ronen Bar, the head of Israel's Shin Bet domestic intelligence service, speaking on a recording leaked to Israel’s state radio Kan.
“This is our Munich,” Bar said in the recording, referring to Operation Wrath of God, Israel’s multi-year effort to wipe out the Black September Palestinian terrorists who killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. That campaign was celebrated in the 2005 Steven Spielberg epic “Munich,” starring Eric Bana.
“In every location, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar, everyone,” Bar said in the recordings, which were aired by Kan last weekend.
“It will take a few years, but we will be there in order to do it.”
Bar's remarks echoed an order given by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service: “I have instructed the Mossad to act against the heads of Hamas wherever they are,” he said on November 22.
In the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas that killed some 1,200 people in a single day, and saw Hamas take another 240 Israelis and foreigners hostage, Israeli leaders have said the war's mission is to decapitate Hamas' leadership and eliminate its military and governing capacity.
The recent statements make clear the Israelis don't intend to limit that mission to Gaza.
Israel has killed scores of Hamas operatives in targeted killings since the group was founded in the 1980s. Most notably, Ahmed Yassin, the paralplegic, half-blind Hamas founder, was killed in 2004 by rockets fired from an Israeli helicopter as he was leaving a mosque in Gaza City.
Today's Hamas leadership includes political and military leaders, in Gaza and beyond. Israel says it intends to pursue them all.
The top three Gaza-based Hamas leaders on Israel’s hit list remain at large in the besieged territory: Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas' military wing (whom Israel tried to kill several times before the current war); Deif's second in command, Marwan Issa; and Hamas' top leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, who has called Oct. 7 a "dress rehearsal" for future attacks against Israel.
As for those believed to be outside Gaza, the group's senior political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, lives in Doha, Qatar; Osama Hamdan, a member of the group's political bureau, is based in Lebanon; Saleh al-Arouri lives in the West Bank as the leader of the group's West Bank political bureau; Moussa Abu Marzouk, Head of Hamas’ international relations arm, is believed to be in Doha; and Saleh Al-Arouri, founding commander of the al-Qassam Brigades and the Hamas military commander of the West Bank, lives in Lebanon.
Among the group's oldest leaders are Mahmoud al-Zahar, a political operative and co-founder of Hamas, who is believed to be in Gaza, and Khaled Meshaal, Haniyeh’s predecessor as the group's leader. Meshal currently has an informal role in Hamas, and lives in Qatar.
It's not clear how many others are on the Israeli list. The Israeli Defense Forces published a chart on its Facebook page in October of six Hamas leaders it claimed to have already killed, and a partial organizational chart of the terror group.
Hamas leadership already taken out by the IDF.Images via IDFThe reaction
In its broadcast of the Shin Bet chief’s remarks Sunday, Kan also reported that Hamas said the assassination threats “do not frighten the organization’s leaders."
The group called the planned killings "a blatant violation of the sovereignty of the ‘sister countries,’ which the senior officials of the enemy mentioned, and constitute a direct harm to the security of these countries.”
"Sister countries" would refer at least to Qatar, Lebanon and Turkey — the nations mentioned in the Israeli statements.
Turkey, which has hosted many Hamas officials, warned Israel on Monday against pursuing Hamas leaders on its territory.
"Necessary warnings were made to the interlocutors based on the news of Israeli officials' statements, and it was expressed to Israel that (such an act) would have serious consequences," a Turkish intelligence official said Monday, according to Israel’s Ynet news agency.
Meanwhile, some analysts said that making these plans public may put Israel in a tough spot.
"If (Israel) could say we've killed Sinwar, we've killed Marwan Issa, we've killed Mohammed Deif, that's a very clear, symbolic and substantive achievement," Michael Eisenstadt, director of the Military and Security Studies Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Reuters.
"But what if they can't get the guys?” he asked. “Do they keep fighting until they get them? And what if what if they just prove elusive?"
The U.S. has not commented publicly on the Israeli statements, but has made clear its preference that the war end in a matter of weeks — not the months or even years that a sweeping pursuit of every Hamas leader might entail.
Hamas's Most Wanted: Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Marwan Issa are on the list for targeted assassinations.MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images; Handout (2)Legal questions
Some targeted killings may be acceptable under international law, Clovis Meath-Baker, a former British diplomat and an expert on asymmetric warfare, told The Messenger, but only under a certain set of conditions: If a target presents a direct and imminent threat, the local government cannot arrest the person, and there is no other way of removing the threat.
Meath-Baker pointed to U.S. drone strikes against Taliban leaders in Pakistan’s Autonomous Tribal Territories.
“The Pakistani government was upset, but these people were beyond the reach of Pakistani law,” he said. But those strikes were criticized for not meeting the standards of imminent threat to the U.S.
Technology has helped make targeted assassination more feasible. Gone are the days when the CIA contemplated getting an exploding cigar into the hands (and mouth) of Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
“The reason it's become fashionable is because it’s possible,” Meath-Baker said. “With drones and tracking — they say ‘Hey, we’ve got all this technology, we see this guy driving around, let’s use it. You don’t give him an exploding cigar, or drop a bomb, you target him very precisely.”
Israel is believed to have used remote-controlled machine guns to kill nuclear scientists inside Iran, and worked with the CIA to build an exploding car tire to kill a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon.
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