The state must inform the High Court of Justice within 45 days on whether it is willing to establish an independent committee to investigate the assassination of leading Hamas militant Saleh Shehadeh in July 2002, including the question of whether a criminal probe is justified.

Justices Dorit Beinisch, Eliezer Rivlin and Ayala Procaccia made the ruling on Sunday.

Shehadeh was killed when the air force dropped a one-ton bomb on his apartment building in Gaza. The explosion destroyed the building and killed 14 other people, most of them women and children. After the attorney general refused to order a criminal investigation into the incident, the High Court was petitioned by Yesh Gvul, a group formed by reserve soldiers who opposed the first Lebanon war.

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The ruling handed down at Sunday's hearing rested on an earlier decision issued in December 2006 by a panel headed by then Supreme Court president Aharon Barak. That ruling upheld the government's right to assassinate terrorists, but said that if an assassination resulted in the death of innocent civilians, the decision and its execution must then be "objectively" examined to determine what went wrong. While the court did not clarify what it meant by this, legal experts believe an inquiry committee set up by the Defense Ministry would suffice.

In this case, an inquiry would probably focus on whether the army could or should have known that the bombing was likely to kill innocent people. The army claimed at the time that it had no reason to foresee this result.

At Sunday's hearing, government attorney Shai Nitzan declined to reveal the findings of an internal army probe into Shehadeh's killing. However, under pressure from the justices, he then pledged that the army would consider agreeing to an independent probe whose findings would be given to both the petitioners and the court.

If the army refuses, the government may consider establishing such an inquiry committee without its consent.

Yesh Gvul originally filed its petition in September 2003. However, the court repeatedly postponed hearing it, and finally decided to do so only after issuing its ruling on the legality of assassinations in principle