Israel Court Won't Ban Targeted Killings (AP)

[Eugene]

Israel Court Won't Ban Targeted Killings
By MATTI FRIEDMAN
Associated Press Writer

December 14, 2006

JERUSALEM -- The Israeli Supreme Court decided Thursday not to issue a blanket ban
against the targeted killing of Palestinian militants, ruling that some of the killings
were legal under international law.

The ruling gave legal legitimacy to a practice Israeli forces have routinely used against
militants during the past six years of violence. The Israeli human rights organization
B'tselem estimates that 339 Palestinians have been killed in the targeted operations
over the past six years. Of those, 210 were the targets and the rest were bystanders.

The three-judge panel unanimously ruled that "it cannot be determined in advance that
every targeted killing is prohibited according to customary international law," while also
noting that the tactic was not necessarily legal in every case.

Two human rights groups, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and the
Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment petitioned
the court to ban the policy in 2002, but the court repeatedly delayed issuing a decision
on the case.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-israel-targeted-killings,0,2836905.story

[eyl]

1. For more details

a summary of the verdict (Hebrew version here) and the verdict (Hebrew version here) itself (I suspect the links to the summary may expire et some point).

I'll try to comment on this later.