Israel faces appalling attacks against its civilians. Since the beginning of the current intifada in September 2000 and until December 31, 2002, Palestinians have killed 443 Israeli civilians, among them eighty-three minors. Many more have been seriously injured. These attacks have spread fear and significantly affected daily life. While implementing its policy of "targeted killing" chosen as one of Israel's responses to these attacks, Israel has killed at least eighty-six Palestinians and another forty Palestinian bystanders.

The policy of "targeted killing," as the Israeli government calls it, raises numerous questions concerning its legality and morality. Steven David admits that this policy suffers from several shortcomings but nevertheless considers it legal, moral, and effective and suggests only a few minor changes. Israel should, however, immediately forgo this policy, which is illegal according to international and Israeli law and based on shaky moral grounds. Its effectiveness--although irrelevant to a moral and legal debate--is also controversial. Even if this policy were legal, moral, and effective, the way Israel is implementing it provides, in and of itself, sufficient grounds for desisting from it.

David refers to the policy as "targeted killing" claiming it is not assassination. His main argument is that "Israel is engaged in armed conflict with terrorists, those targeted are often killed by conventional military means, and the targets of the attacks are mostly combatants or are part of the military chain of command," David does admit, however, that "in those cases in which targeted killings did not fit these criteria, they may indeed by considered assassinations" (p. 114).

The definition of the situation as "armed conflict" is highly controversial and the people killed do not meet the legal definition of combatants. Regarding the use of "conventional military means" David himself says, "In some of their killings, the Israelis have used deception, disguising themselves as women or Arabs to facilitate getting to their targets," (p. 113) and he concedes that these cases could not be justified. But "treacherous means" have been used in more instances than David allows. In the vast majority of cases, the killings required the cooperation of Palestinian collaborators and informers, and no "targeted killing" would have been possible without the information received from them. (1) Cooperation from these collaborators is usually obtained through the use of illegal means, such as threats to the collaborators or their families, extortion, or bribes. (2)

Since almost none of the killings fit within David's criteria, according to his framework the policy currently enacted in the occupied territories should be defined as assassination. This is the term used below, rather than "targeted killing," a term so far unknown in international law. "Assassination" is also the term by which international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, refer to this policy. (3) The use of clean language to describe this policy may conveniently allow the perpetrators to persist in its implementation and believe it is legal. Whatever one chooses to call it, however, this policy will remain illegal, as well...