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TITLE: 'Liquidations' Legal Acts in Time of War, State Tells Court |
AUTHOR: Moshe Reinfeld |
PUB: Ha'aretz |
DATE: February 12, 2001 |
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The killing of Palestinian terrorists by Israeli forces is legal under the rules of war codified in international law, the government argued yesterday before the High Court of Justice. The state's High Court brief was in response to a petition filed by the widow of Dr. Thabet Thabet, a Fatah leader from Tul Karm who was slain by Israeli forces. Her petition asked the court to end Israel's "policy of assassinations." The government's brief, authored by attorney Shai Nitzan, said the court should reject Thabet's petition out of hand because "the matter is fundamentally non-justiciable." What Dr. Siham Thabet is effectively asking, Nitzan argued, is that the court intervene in an operational combat decision - a matter clearly out of its purview. Thabet's request, he said, is equivalent to a petition asking Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) tanks not to return fire at Palestinian gunmen, or that the government not order the air force to bomb Palestinian targets. The killings are not "extrajudicial executions," as the petition claimed, but rather are legitimate acts of war, whose purpose is to prevent additional terror attacks, Nitzan continued, quoting a legal opinion on the subject sent by Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein to MK Zahava Gal-On (Meretz). "The laws of combat, which are part of international law, permit injuring, during a period of warlike operations, someone who has been positively identified as a person who is working to carry out fatal attacks against Israeli targets," Rubinstein wrote. "These people are enemies who are fighting against Israel, with all that implies, while committing fatal terror attacks and intending to commit additional attacks - all without any countermeasures by the Palestinian Authority." Nitzan said assassinations are carried out only in exceptional cases, when the security services believe there is no alternative in order to save lives. According to court testimony, 30 Israelis have been killed by Palestinian violence since the beginning of last October, and 158 have been wounded. END |