In the years 2002-2003 the GSS, the IDF Intelligence Branch (mainly the 8200 unit) and the Air Force conducted Operation Anemone, which targeted Hamas’s leaders. Yesterday’s attack on Ahmed Jaabari and the attempts to kill other senior figures could be called Operation Anemone Two-an Israeli attempt to rewrite the rules of the game, as it tried to a decade ago.

Suicide bombing attacks, “the poor man’s smart bomb,” was considered undefeatable for years and hurt Israel badly after the start of the second Intifada-the blood, the grief, the bereavement, the agony and the enormous economic damage were beyond the country’s ability to absorb. The Israeli intelligence community, in an unprecedented act of joining forces, basically made itself subordinate to the GSS and invested most of its resources to a double purpose: preventing the terror attacks and targeting the perpetrators. The policy of targeted killings became the preferred method of setting the price that it would levy on the people who recruited and sent the suicide bombers.

The main assassination at that time, that of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, became a bone of contention in the circle of decision-makers: was it moral to kill an old man in a wheel chair? Was there any direct proof of his involvement in terrorism? And mainly, did his assassination help Israel, or only “open the gates of hell” as Hamas threatened. The debate was decided by high-ranking legal officials after it was learned, from outstanding intelligence, that Sheikh Ahmed Yassin had issued a religious ruling permitting women to take part in suicide bombing attacks. He was assassinated, and Hamas crowned Abdul Aziz Rantisi in his place-who was also assassinated a month later.

Hamas was badly hurt by this anemone picking, and tried, almost begged, for a cease-fire. The combination of the construction of the separation fence plus the targeted killings, proved themselves. The comments made by Avi Dichter, who was then GSS director, that “the barrel of terror has a bottom” and that it is not necessary to kill all the terrorists to reach the bottom-but just hit their heads-was proven accurate.

Jaabari has been the preferred target of Israeli intelligence in recent years. The majority of the people tracking him, not just physically, were espionage figures of rare ability-men and women aged under 25. It was possible to target him a number of times, but the political echelon did not give the green light. Until yesterday.

The goal of assassinating Jaabari is similar to the goals of Operation Anemone-to rewrite the rules of the game; Israel wants to make it clear that the use of rockets will lead to attacks on Hamas’s leaders. The deliberations are also similar-will a return to assassinations hurt Hamas and restore quiet, or will it lead to a ground war.

In tandem with our admiration for Israeli intelligence ability, we should also bear in mind that the weapon of assassinations proved itself to be a double-edged sword in the past. In 1992, Israel assassinated the Hizbullah secretary general, Abbas Musawi, and then came under a hail of Katyusha rockets, the assassination of the security officer in the Ankara embassy and the blowing up of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. Instead of Israel rewriting the rules, Imad Mughniyah did. Looking back, not even all the assassinations of the second Intifada led to the hoped-for results. Some of them, and no doubt senior intelligence officials will also agree, in fact led to a resumption of the suicide bomber terror and accelerated the transition of the secular Tanzim to also employ this method.

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