TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) - Amer Qurmot never saw it coming: In a split second, an Israeli missile killed the 44-year-old Palestinian rocket mastermind as he walked along a road in the northern Gaza Strip. With that Feb. 4 assassination, Qurmot became the latest in a long line of Gaza militant leaders to be struck down by Israeli aircraft. In the face of Israeli threats to go after militant leaders in response to rocket fire on Israeli towns near Gaza, the likelihood of additional airstrikes is high.
Israel's policy of ``targeted killings'' has reshaped the battlefield in Gaza's crowded urban landscape in recent years. Developed during a spate of suicide bombings inside Israel, the practice also has drawn widespread criticism because of the dozens of Palestinian civilians accidentally killed and questions about whether it amounts to summary execution.
Israel responds that it has refined its ability to strike with startling precision, using ever-improving intelligence and sophisticated weaponry that the military says has sharply reduced the number of civilian casualties."We try to hit only terrorists. There is a trend of a very dramatic improvement in the ratio of hitting the terrorists and not hitting the uninvolved,'' a senior air force commander said in a rare interview. ``We are very proud of it.''
Qurmot, a leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, was hit along with two comrades, who were wounded. The deadly strike on a clear Monday afternoon, left nothing more than a small hole in the ground, and civilians nearby were unharmed, witnesses said.
Palestinian witnesses have reported that missiles flew into buildings, killing their target while barely damaging the structures. In December, four militants standing near each other were killed by four separate missiles, witnesses said. With tensions heightened in Gaza this month, Hamas lawmakers called off a parliamentary meeting, fearing assassination.
But there have been high-profile blunders too. In 2002, an airstrike on the home of Hamas mastermind Salah Shehadeh killed him and 14 other people, including nine children. The following year, an airstrike in a Gaza refugee camp killed more than 10 civilians.
Blunder? Sounds like they got who they were aiming at, even if he was hiding behind kids...
The air force commander, who was barred from being identified under military guidelines, said the number of bystanders killed in airstrikes has dropped from 50 percent in 2002 to less than 5 percent today.
Palestinians and human rights groups said the figure is much higher - a discrepancy possibly due to differing definitions of who is a militant - but acknowledged the air force has become more accurate. "Generally, it is true that the air force is becoming more efficient,'' said Sarit Michaeli, spokeswoman for B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group that monitors rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
According to B'Tselem, 137 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes last year. Of those, it says, 28 people, or 20 percent, were civilians, compared with nearly 30 percent in 2004, the group says. The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights says just over 50 percent of airstrike deaths last year were civilians.
On Feb. 7, Palestinian teacher Hani Naim was killed by an airstrike near the agricultural school where he worked - the only fatality in the attack. The Israeli army said militants had fired rockets from the area, and witnesses spotted rocket-launching equipment in a nearby olive grove. But that gave little comfort to the dead man's relatives. "If the Israelis think they shot at a terrorist today, they are wrong," said his brother, Yusef. "Shame on you."
The practice has long drawn condemnation from Palestinians and human rights groups, even when the intended targets are hit.
The Shehadeh case, in which the air force dropped a one-ton bomb on the home of the suicide bombing mastermind, haunts the air force. At least two former officials connected to the attack have canceled trips to Britain, fearing war crimes charges.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently appointed a committee to review the practice of airstrikes, following a 2006 Supreme Court decision that upheld the policy of targeted killings, but warned some attacks might be illegal. The court said each case needs to be evaluated individually to determine its legality. Israeli officials said the committee would review past cases, but it was unclear whether it would set guidelines for future attacks.
The Israeli commander gave rare insight into Israeli capabilities, saying the air force can now react within seconds if militants are spotted setting up an attack. In the case of wanted leaders, Israel can track the target for much longer while waiting for the moment to strike.
"Preplanning can go between hours to days, but the reaction time can be very fast," he said. He said the air force uses a variety of tools, including "real-time" intelligence such as informants and pilotless spy planes. To lessen civilian casualties, operations often are called off at the last second if a risk is identified, he said, and pilots can even divert missiles after they have been fired.
The military also has developed smaller, more precise weapons that spray little or no shrapnel, he said. Occasionally, targeted men survive attacks because of the scaled-back weaponry. Israeli military officials said U.S.-made warplanes and helicopters have been used in airstrikes, and the latest weapons use both Israeli and American technology. They refused to confirm numerous claims by Palestinian witnesses that pilotless Israeli-made drones also fire low-shrapnel missiles.
John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense research group in Washington, said Israel uses low-yield munitions that "only hit what you want and nothing much else." He said the technology has been shared with the U.S., which uses it in Iraq. Still, Pike said the Israeli claim of minimal civilian casualties "sounds too good to be true, "noting it's "a very big challenge" to avoid bystanders in a city.
The Israeli commander acknowledged human error and weapons malfunctions still can occur, and targeted cars may contain explosives. In some cases, Israel is prepared to risk civilian casualties to eliminate a particularly sinister target, he said. "Sometimes you understand that if you are not attacking this terrorist, your people are going to suffer badly," he said.
Critics also note that despite hundreds of airstrikes over the years, Israel has been unable to halt incessant rocket attacks on its southern civilians. But it has forced militants to alter their routines, said Dawoud Shihab, an Islamic Jihad leader. "That includes turning off mobile phones, avoiding getting into cars. We try to restrict our movements and keep a low profile," he said. 
|
