Israeli Supreme Court declines to ban targeted killings

The Israeli Supreme Court today decided 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 organisation B’tselem estimates that 339 Palestinians were 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.