In Israel, a Divisive Struggle Over Targeted Killing

In the prime minister's office, Maj. Gen. Yoav Gallant, the military secretary, informed Ariel Sharon. The prime minister banged the table with an open palm, Gallant said. "Get them," Sharon ordered. "This is the most important operation."

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It was an operation, for Yaalon, that had evolved from an earlier meeting with an earlier prime minister. In the fall of 2000, when Palestinian-Israeli violence erupted, Yaalon approached Prime Minister Ehud Barak with an idea. Instead of imposing restrictions on all Palestinians, they should launch "surgical operations" against terrorists. Yaalon suggested setting up a joint command post for Shin Bet and the military.

"It wasn't something new -- we were in this business," Barak said in an interview. In 1973, in Beirut, wearing high heels and a woman's wig, Barak helped gun down three of the terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. "I was a brunette, I had a strawberry blonde behind me," Barak said, with a small smile.

As military chief of staff in the early 1990s, Barak had organized undercover units called "Cherry" and "Samson," soldiers who dressed like Arabs and killed Palestinians suspected of violence.

When Barak reactivated targeted killings in 2000, he said, "the first were urgent, but after, I said, 'We need rules.' " An aide exhumed four typed pages in a dusty, plastic sleeve, Barak said. They were the rules of engagement for the avengers of the 1972 Munich massacre.

Barak also secretly asked Daniel Reisner, a legal adviser to Arab-Israeli peace talks, to determine whether targeted killings were legal. Reisner agonized for six weeks. "It was a feeling of -- what on Earth has happened?" Reisner recalled. "Instead of two states living amicably side by side, I have to write opinions on how and when we kill each other."

Reisner concluded it was legal, with six conditions: that arrest is impossible; that targets are combatants; that senior cabinet members approve each attack; that civilian casualties are minimized; that operations are limited to areas not under Israeli control; and that targets are identified as a future threat. Unlike prison sentences, targeted killing cannot be meted out as punishment for past behavior, Reisner said. In 2002, a military panel established that targeting cannot be for revenge, but only for deterrence. A panelist said it took six months and 20 meetings to reach that conclusion.

"It's not an eye for an eye," Dichter said. "It's having him for lunch before he has you for dinner."

By dinnertime on Sept. 5, 2003, Dichter's intelligence network had narrowed the location of the Hamas summit. Only two Hamas members were trusted enough by the leadership to host the meeting. One lived in a private home, the other in a 12-story apartment building. It was 8 p.m. on Friday when Dichter placed a conference call.

"I'll be back in a few minutes," Mofaz, the defense minister, said to his wife and four children on Friday evening, as he ran from the table to pick up the gray, coded phone. He had just recited the blessings over the wine and challah bread.

Yaalon, also on the conference call, said the air force was preparing a plan, "Operation Automatic Gear." For Israelis, 2003 had been a bloody summer. Terrorists blew themselves up at grocery stores, at bus stops and on buses, including one packed with children. Israel declared Hamas's political and military leaders fair game.

Mofaz told Dichter and Yaalon, "Tomorrow may be a historic day."