Having been deployed in Gaza since 2008, the Israeli government has given the IDF the green light for using unmanned drones in targeted killings in the West Bank.
“The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has approved the use of attack drones to assassinate Palestinian terrorism suspects in the West Bank, the Jerusalem Post reported on Thursday. The order comes after a violent Israeli raid a day earlier, and as the IDF increasingly looks to robots to police the Palestinian territories.
According to the newspaper, IDF commanders will be allowed to use drones ‘to carry out strikes should armed gunmen be identified as posing imminent threats to their troops’. Senior officers discussed the doctrinal change on Wednesday, the report continued, with Chief of Staff General Aviv Kohavi signing off on the order.
Israel has used Elbit’s Hermes 450 drones to carry out targeted assassinations in Gaza since 2008. These drones have been in production since the late 1990s, but establishing a full account of their usage is difficult, as Israel’s military censor had banned reports on their use until earlier this year.
The drones have never been used offensively over the West Bank, at least according to the IDF. However, the decision to change this policy came after four Palestinians were killed and 44 others injured during a raid on a refugee camp in Jenin early on Wednesday. However, the IDF was considering green-lighting drone killings as far back as May, when an Israeli counter-terror commando was killed during a similar operation in Jenin, the Jerusalem Post claimed.
Wednesday’s raid was aimed at arresting the brother of Raad Hazem, who killed three Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv in April. Such attacks, apparently organized and staged from Jenin, have prompted fears that the IDF will soon conduct a large-scale military operation in the West Bank.
For now, Israel is hoping that drones and remote-controlled weapons can keep its troops out of harm’s way in the West Bank. The IDF recently installed a remote gun turret in a heavily populated area of Hebron, after reportedly deploying facial recognition technology on the Palestinian territory last year”. -RT
The fact that the Israelis appear to be afraid to risk the failure of a ground invasion is probably the most significant aspect of this new revelation in this ongoing conflict.
Similar to Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, the order was likely given to drag Israel into a more extensive operation in the northern West Bank.
Although drone strikes have been used in the targeted killings of members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza since 2008, they have yet to be implemented in an attempt to thwart terrorists in the West Bank.
While one cannot fault Israel for taking measures to defend itself, using a terror tactic to combat the War on Terror will all but ensure that every terrorist and non-terrorist killed will spawn an even greater number of political incendiaries than had existed prior.