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State to review 2007 IDF assassinations in Gaza, W. Bank
By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Gaza, Israel, assassinations 

The government is working on guidelines for establishing committees to review army assassinations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that killed civilians in the past year.

The Israel Defense Forces, Military Advocate General office, Justice Ministry and other bodies are involved in setting up the review boards, Haaretz has learned.

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his comes on the order of the High Court of Justice, in its definitive ruling on "the policy of assassinations" in the territories. That ruling set criteria for when it would be necessary to establish objective review panels to examine the legality of assassinations in which civilians died.

However, the State Prosecutor's Office and Military Advocate General recently rejected a demand that the Military Police launch criminal investigations into six assassinations in Gaza, between March 2006 and May 2007, in which 35 Palestinian civilians were killed, including many children. The IDF claims the court ruling refers only to assassination operations that occured after the December 2006 ruling, and claims these six incidents either do not fit the time frame or cannot be considered targeted assassinations.

One of Aharon Barak's final verdicts as Supreme Court president, in which Israel's "assassination policy" was sanctioned, stipulates, "Preventive activity by the army that causes the death of nearby innocent civilians requires a retroactive examination of the army's conduct, and this examination must be objective." Following this ruling, the IDF agreed to review the assassination of Salah Shehadeh, in July 2002. Shehadeh was killed by a one-ton bomb dropped on an apartment building in Gaza, along with 14 civilians.

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem then sought to get the army to probe six assassinations in Gaza that were carried out in the past two years. B'Tselem's executive director, Jessica Montel, asked Attorney General Menachem Mazuz six months ago to order the MAG to launch a criminal Military Police investigation or to set up a mechanism for objective reviews of these killings.

"Having a mechanism of this sort is particularly crucial in view of the MAG's policy since the start of the second intifada, of not opening criminal investigations in the vast majority of cases in which Palestinian civilians are killed, including non-combatants," Montel wrote to Mazuz. "The MAG makes do with an internal inquiry, but it is clear that a probe by someone in the chain of command cannot be considered objective."

The state does not deem the criteria set in the High Court ruling as requiring an objective review in every case of civilian fatalities in assassinations.

"There is no room to accede to your sweeping request," Montel was informed by Mazuz's deputy for special affairs, Shai Nitzan. "The MAG examines every matter according to its circumstances and when a criminal investigation is justified, he orders one."

Nitzan added that he sees no reason to create a permanent mechanism to replace or supplement the MAG's inquiry.

"We do not believe there is a legal obligation to establish a sweeping review committee that would examine every case over and above the examination performed by the Military Advocate General," he said.

B'Tselem's demand for a criminal investigation of the six assassinations in the past two years was also rejected. Four have been rejected, and the last two are still officially under review by the MAG.

Human rights groups say they will petition the High Court if the demand for additional probes is not met.

A statement from the IDF Spokesman's Office said: "As part of implementing the High Court ruling, inter-office preparatory work is in the process of nearing an end, to formulate the guidelines according to which targeted assassination operations will be examined retroactively. Once the preparatory work is finished, there will be reviews of the targeted assassination operations that were carried out after the date of the court ruling. It has also been decided, as an exception, to establish a review committee to examine the targeted assassination of senior Hamas member Salah Shehadeh. The events mentioned in the letter from human rights groups were checked, and of these, some of the operations occured before the ruling was handed down, and some do not constitute targeted assassinations at all, and the High Court ruling does not apply to them."


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