C'tee might probe 2002 killing of Hamas commander Shehadeh

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"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. The ruling was made yesterday by Justices Dorit Beinisch, Eliezer Rivlin and Ayala Procaccia.

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.

The ruling handed down at yesterday'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."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/871961.html


World Leaders Call Israeli Air Strike 'Disgusting, Ugly,' A 'Horrible Act' (July 24, 2002)

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"The flag-wrapped body of a 2-month-old girl was carried through the streets yesterday as tens of thousands of Palestinians marched to bury their dead after an Israeli air strike killed a top Hamas leader and 14 civilians, including nine children. The Islamic militant group vowed revenge.

President Bush called the Israeli missile strike "heavy-handed," joining other world leaders in sharp criticism of the attack, which leveled an apartment building and destroyed other nearby buildings in a crowded neighborhood of Gaza City overnight. Palestinian doctors said more than 100 people were wounded.

The Israeli prime minister hailed the operation, which successfully targeted Salah Shehadeh, the top commander of Hamas' military wing, Izzadine el-Qassam.

"This operation was in my view one of our biggest successes," Ariel Sharon told Cabinet ministers. "We hit perhaps the most senior Hamas figure on the operational side," Sharon said of Shehadeh, who was jailed first by Israel, and then by the Palestinians, from 1988 to 1999."

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