Assassination tactics are unlikely to ensure Israel’s security

On March 22, 2004, as Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas and the group’s spiritual leader, performed morning prayers in Gaza City, the largest city in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli Air Force F-16 fighter jet roared overhead.

The roar of the F-16 fighter jet drowned out the sound of the Israeli army’s AH-64 Apache helicopter gunship approaching the mosque where Yassin was praying. As Yassin, who was paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair, left the mosque, the AH-64 fired a Hellfire missile at him and his bodyguards, killing them instantly, along with nine bystanders.

Then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned Yassin’s assassination, but Israel accused him of involvement in bombings directed against Tel Aviv. Israel declared a nationwide alert as 200,000 people attended Yassin’s funeral and Hamas called for revenge.

“Even if Hamas reacts strongly in the short term, in the long term its effect will be to restrain Hamas and other groups, because their leaders know they will be destroyed,” Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel’s finance minister, said at the time.

Israel appears to continue this policy to strengthen deterrence against Hamas. After Yassin’s death, his deputy Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi became the group’s leader, but was also killed in another assassination attempt.

Twenty years later, Netanyahu is now Prime Minister of Israel, but the war with Hamas has not stopped and Israel continues to hunt down the leaders of armed groups, although this strategy does not seem to make them any safer.

Following the security failure of Hamas’ surprise attack on the south of the country in October 2023, Israeli officials said that going after Hamas leaders was important because it would scare the enemy.

During the 10-month conflict in Gaza, Israel announced the elimination of Hamas armed wing leader Mohammed Deif, Deif’s deputy and several lower-ranking commanders.

On the morning of July 31, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an explosion in Tehran. Iran accused Israeli intelligence of carrying out the assassination, but Tel Aviv has not publicly acknowledged it, although US media quoted anonymous sources as saying they had confirmed to Washington that Israel was behind the incident.

Hamas suffered a major blow after losing two of its leaders recently, but the group quickly appointed new leaders to replace them and continued to confront Tel Aviv.

Haniyeh’s successor is Yahya Sinwar, who is believed to be the architect of the October 2023 attack on Israel and has been fiercely anti-Tel Aviv. Sinwar has close ties to Iran, a country that shares his goal of confronting Israel.

“The past 30 years have shown that assassinations only encourage armed groups to act more aggressively. They make them stronger and more popular,” said Azzam Tamimi, who has written books about Hamas.

The risk of Israeli miscalculation is high, as its assassination campaign has spread beyond Gaza. At least seven Hamas commanders have been killed in Lebanon since the Gaza conflict began.

Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran last month came just hours after Israel killed Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s right-hand man, in the Lebanese capital Beirut. The move was seen as retaliation for a soccer stadium attack that killed 12 teenagers in the Golan Heights.

Shukr was one of Hezbollah’s founders and played a key role in building the group into a major force in the Middle East. Shukr’s death is seen as the most serious Israeli blow to Hezbollah’s command since the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh in 2008.

Israel is expecting a “massive blow” from Iran and Hezbollah, while Western leaders and diplomats fear Tehran’s military move could spark all-out war in the Middle East.

“Israel has faced many reprisals that have resulted in civilian casualties after such killings. They are very dangerous and pose too great a risk,” said Gershon Baskin, Israel’s former interlocutor with Hamas.

The effectiveness of assassinations has been highly controversial in Israel since Tel Aviv pursued this strategy. In the book Rise and Kill First Published in 2018, Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman said that since World War II, Israeli security and intelligence forces have conducted more than 2,700 assassination campaigns, more than any other country in the world.

These assassinations are carried out to deter attacks on Israel, to restrain the military capabilities of opponents, or to send a message that Tel Aviv will not tolerate anyone who wants to harm the country.

After the Palestinian group Black September murdered Israeli coaches and athletes at the Munich Olympic Village in 1972, former Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered Israeli spies to hunt down those involved in an operation dubbed Operation Wrath of God.

The rise of Hamas in the late 1980s saw a significant increase in Israeli assassinations. But they also sometimes backfired. Yahya Ayyash, one of the group’s early military leaders, learned how to make explosive devices, ushering in an era of suicide bombings in the conflict with Israel.

After a series of bombings in the 1990s blamed on Hamas, Israel assassinated Ayyash by planting explosives in his phone and detonating it as soon as the Hamas leader answered. But suicide attacks continued to increase under new Hamas military leaders, including Mohammed Deif.

In 1997, Israel targeted Hamas founder Khaled Meshaal, a leader living in Jordan. Israeli agents posed as tourists from Canada and sprayed a poison into Meshaal’s ear outside the Hamas political headquarters in Amman. However, they were arrested by Jordanian security forces shortly afterwards.

Meshaal was left in a coma after the attack, while Jordan threatened to end its peace treaty with Israel unless Tel Aviv provided a cure for the Hamas leader. At the time, Efraim Halevy, an Israeli official who helped build relations with Jordan, suggested that Tel Aviv release Hamas spiritual leader Yassin, who was being held by Israel, to help Jordan save face and secure the release of Mossad agents.

Halevy said in an interview that Israel’s policy of killing Hamas leaders is ineffective and sometimes creates more dangerous leaders.

Former Israeli officials also often point to the 1992 assassination of Abbas al-Musawi, one of Hezbollah’s founders, as paving the way for current leader Hassan Nasrallah to take power and build the militant group into a more powerful adversary to Israel.

“I never thought that cutting the grass would stop new grass from growing,” said Halevy, who headed the Mossad intelligence agency in 1998.

Scholars do not appreciate this tactic. Killing the leader of an armed group only increases the risk of diplomatic condemnation and may violate international law.

However, assassination tactics can sometimes disrupt a group’s operations, forcing its leaders to go underground, observers say.

“Many groups have replaced their leaders, but killings can still disrupt normal group operations and can have important symbolic effects,” said Matthew Waxman, a professor at Columbia Law School and former US national security official.

The 2004 assassination of Yassin remains one of the most iconic acts of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. One of the Israeli officials who supported Yassin’s 2004 killing was former Prime Minister Ehud Okmert, who was then industry minister. While he did not believe assassinations were always effective, he believed that Yassin’s killing reduced the Hamas threat.

“He is the supreme leader of Hamas and removing him would be very important to create a crisis in the Hamas leadership for a while,” Olmert said.

Yassin’s death, one of several assassinations of Hamas leaders at the time, prompted the group to end hostilities during the second intifada against Israel. However, the impact was often short-lived.

Two years later, Hamas entered the political arena and won Palestinian legislative elections. In 2007, Hamas took control of the entire Gaza Strip, setting the stage for its October 2023 attack on Israel.

Observers say Netanyahu’s prediction 20 years ago was partly wrong, as the deterrent effect of assassinating Hamas leaders could not be effective in the long term. Israel’s war against Hamas continues with short conflicts in Gaza in 2008, 2011, 2014, 2021 and the current 10-month conflict.