Is Israel returning to the policy of ‘Targeted Eliminations’?
Tamer Kilani, a 33-year-old leader of the Nablus-based terror cell Lion’s Den, was killed in an explosion in the early morning hours on Sunday.
Palestinian demonstrators clash with Israeli security forces during a protest in the village of Kfar Qaddum, near the West Bank city of Nablus, July 22, 2022. Photo by Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90.
If the allegations made by Lion’s Den turn out to be true – that Israel was behind the explosion in a “targeted assassination” – it would constitute an escalation in the IDF’s current anti-terrorism campaigns.
Kilani, a resident of Nablus, was killed in the Al Yasmina neighbourhood in the Old City of Nablus when a bomb attached to a motor scooter exploded.
According to Palestinian sources that spoke with TPS, the assassination was carried out using a sticky TNT charge attached to a scooter, which was placed in one of the alleys in the Al Yasmina neighbourhood in the Nablus Kasbah shortly before Al Kilani passed by. Some claim that a drone hovered over the city at the time to observe when Kilani was close enough to set off the explosion
Kilani previously spent eight years in prison for his terror activities in the military arm of the Popular Front, “Abu Ali Matzafa Brigades.”
Lion’s Den was responsible for sending the terrorist Muhammad Al Manawi, who was captured before he could enact a terrorist attack in Jaffa over a month ago and who was also responsible for a series of shootings directed at IDF forces in Samaria.
The deterioration of the security situation is also reflected in a sharp increase in the number of Palestinian deaths this year. The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced Sunday morning that so far this year 177 Palestinians were killed in clashes with the IDF, including 51 residents of the Gaza Strip who were killed in Operation Breaking Dawn.
The targeted elimination that the Palestinians now attribute to the IDF and the “incident” in the Kasbah of Nablus is considered by the Palestinians to be the most lethal and effective method.
The IDF attaches great importance to the elimination of “political” leaders of the Palestinian terrorist organizations and less so to the elimination of field operatives who are considered “ticking bombs.”
There is no shortage of examples of Israel’s having “taken out” terrorist leaders in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip over the years. For example, Sheikh, Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, was eliminated in 2004 in response to a wave of suicide bombings on buses, Abu Ali Matzafa, and in 2001, the Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was killed while in his office in Ramallah, using missiles fired from an IDF Apache helicopter.
Nablus is becoming, and not for the first time, the “capital of terror.” During the al-Aqsa Intifada, the IDF used a variety of methods of elimination in the city. Iman Halawa, an engineer in the service of Hamas and a suicide recruiter, was killed when a bomb exploded in the car he was driving near Rafidiya Hospital, while Osama Jawabra, a member of the “Al-Aqsa Martyrs” of Fatah, found his death in an explosion inside a public telephone booth in 2001
Others were killed when fences or vehicles exploded near them. According to Palestinian sources, 195 people were eliminated by various methods of “targeted elimination” during the first intifada, while 167 terrorist operatives from Gaza died in “targeted eliminations” in the second intifada.
