Targeted Assassinations

Hospitals have been told to prepare for large numbers of casualties. Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv has emptied its underground car park, so that medical units and patients can be transferred there should the city be attacked.

Generators in government ministries, hospitals and hotels are being checked to ensure that they will have an uninterrupted supply of electricity should power stations or the electricity grid be put out of action.

Industrial plants in the north of Israel have been instructed to reduce the amount of ammonia in their tanks to limit the damage that will be caused should they be attacked.

All of this and more is taking place as Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraq, Syria and the Houthis prepare their response to the targeted assassinations of top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr and senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Israelis anxious wait to see what will happen over the coming days.

One cannot help but wonder whether Shukr and Haniyeh were such important targets that it was worth taking the risk that Israel might now find itself engaged in an all-out war with both Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as their patron Iran.

Targeted assassinations may be a way of showing our enemies how effective our secret service is, how we can reach anyone and how there are no hiding places. However, the question has to be asked to what degree the benefits of such attacks outweigh the price that our country will now inevitably pay.

No one is irreplaceable. Sheik Ahmed Yassin, one of the founders of Hamas, was assassinated in Gaza City in 2004. Shortly after his death, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi took over the leadership of the movement. He too was assassinated. His successor, Khaled Mashal, survived a botched attempt on his life by Mossad agents in 1997.

Although he was replaced as head of the politburo in 2017 by Ismail Haniyeh, there is now talk of his returning following the latter’s assassination earlier this week. No one is indispensable or irreplaceable.

Those responsible for giving the go-ahead for such targeted assassinations need to ask themselves to what degree they are worth the risk and whether they have any real, long-term impact.

Twenty years after Ahmed Yassin was eliminated, Hamas has not disappeared. On the contrary. The tragic events that took place on October 7 only serve to show what a formidable force Hamas has become.

Targeted assassinations may give some people a badly needed moral boost, but they cannot replace a serious, coherent political strategy as to where all of this is meant to lead us.