2000: The terms “liquidation” and “preemptive targeted killing” started gaining traction in the Israeli media and were used by Israeli senior officials as euphemisms for its newly launched campaign of assassinations during the second Palestinian Intifada.

9 November 2000: As the second Intifada unfolded, Israel revamped its policy of assassinating leading figures. An Israeli helicopter launched anti-tank missiles at a truck carrying Hussein Abayat, a senior commander in the paramilitary unit of the Palestinian movement Fatah, killing him and severely injuring his assistant.

22 July 2002: An Israeli warplane bombed the home of Salah Shehade, leader of the Izzeddin Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. The bomb, dropped by an Israeli F-16 fighter, killed Salah Shehadeh along with his wife and daughter and the Matar family who lived next door.

The Israeli one-ton bomb also killed seven children. Accepted as collateral damage, then-Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon hailed the assassination as “one of our greatest successes.”

8 March 2003: An Israeli Apache helicopter rained down five missiles on a street in Gaza City targeting Ibrahim Al-Makadmeh, a senior leader of Hamas and one of its founders.

“Our homeland will not be liberated and our people will not be freed from Jewish enslavement and occupation without sacrifices. Freedom has a price, and the price is blood,” said Al-Makadmeh, predicting his assassination days before being killed.

21 August 2003: Israeli missiles fell on the Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City, killing Ismail Abu Shanab, the second-highest leader in Hamas at the time. Abu Shanab championed pragmatic policies and supported the path towards a ceasefire with Israel that would lead to a two-state solution.

22 March 2004: Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, one of Hamas’ founders and the spiritual leader of the resistance organisation, was being wheeled out of fajr prayers by his bodyguards in the Sabra district of Gaza City when Israeli Apache helicopter fired missiles at them. The wheelchair-bound spiritual leader and his two bodyguards died instantly.

Yassin argued that “we are fighting Jews because they assaulted us, they killed us, they took our land, our homes, our children, our women, and they scattered us.” His killing was widely condemned, with the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNHCR) passing a resolution denouncing the extrajudicial assassination.

17 April 2004: Israeli hellfire missiles targeted a car carrying Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantissi, the leader of Hamas for a month at the time, killing him and his two bodyguards while injuring four bystanders in Gaza.

Al-Rantissi had promised retribution for the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. He was succeeded by Khaled Meshaal as leader of Hamas.

21 October 2004: An Israeli Apache helicopter attacked a car carrying Adnan Al-Ghoul, one of the leaders of the Qassam Brigades and the creator of the Qassam rocket system nicknamed “Father of the Qassam.”

Al-Ghoul along with Imad Abbad, another member of Hamas and a weapons expert, were killed in the strike.

14 December 2006: Israel’s Supreme Court, the only entity capable of interpreting international law in Israel, issued a ruling that assessed the legality of the Israeli government’s policy of “targeted killings” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

The court determined that a state of continuous armed conflict exists between Israel and various Palestinian groups, making the law of international armed conflict applicable.

12 February 2008: After attending a reception at the Iranian Embassy in Syria, Imad Mughniyeh, a senior leader and founding member of Hizbullah, walked past his car activating a bomb put in the place of the spare tyre.

An investigation led by the Syrian government concluded that the bomb was detonated remotely. The bomb took Mughniyeh’s life in the Kafr Sousa neighbourhood of Damascus, where there had been numerous Mossad assassination attempts since the early 1990s.

1 August 2008: Israel’s Shayetet 13, an elite unit of the Israeli navy mainly responsible for reconnaissance and information gathering, deployed two snipers who attacked the house of Brigadier General Mohamed Suleiman, special presidential adviser for Arms Procurement and Strategic Weapons in Syria.

He was killed by two shots from silenced weapons. Suleiman, responsible for developing Syria’s suspected nuclear programme at the Al-Kibar facility and for arms transfers from Syria to Hizbullah and Hamas, was nicknamed “commander of the shadow army” by former director general of Mossad Meir Dagan.

1 January 2009: During the 2008-2009 Gaza War, an Israeli strike targeted the home of Nizar Rayan, a senior Hamas leader and liaison between Hamas and the Al-Qassam Brigades. The strike claimed the lives of Rayan, his four wives, and his 11 children, the youngest of whom was two years old. The Israeli human rights watchdog B’Tselem stated that the attack constituted “a grave breach of international humanitarian law.”

15 January 2009: The second Israeli assassination of a top Hamas leader targeted Said Seyam, a former interior minister of the Palestinian Authority and a member of Hamas’ collective leadership.

An Israeli air raid targeted Seyam’s brother’s home in Jabalya north of Gaza City. The raid killed Seyam, his son, his brother, and Mahmoud Abu Watfa, another member of Hamas. Following the assassination, a Hamas spokesperson stated that “some of our leaders will fall, some of our people will fall, but the flag of resistance won’t fall.”

19 January 2010: Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, the chief of logistics and weapons procurement for Hamas, returned to his hotel room in Dubai to find Mossad agents waiting for him. The agents injected him with succinylcholine, a potent muscle relaxant that paralysed him. They then electrocuted him and suffocated him with a pillow.

At least 11 agents had followed Al-Mabhouh from Damascus, where he lived, to Dubai. The agents entered the UAE using fake British, Irish, Australian, French, and German passports. The incident sparked international outrage mainly from countries implicated in the incident.

14 November 2012: An Israeli drone strike targeted a senior leader and second-in-command of the Al-Qassam Brigades Ahmed Al-Jaabari’s car as he was driving down Omar Al-Mukhtar Street in Gaza City. After having survived four earlier assassination attempts, Al-Jaabari died along with his bodyguard.

12 February 2013: An Israeli strike targeted a weapons convoy known to be carrying major general of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Al-Quds Force Hassan Shateri. Shateri was assassinated in Syria before heading to Beirut to deliver key weapons to Hizbullah.

18 January 2015: An Israeli airstrike targeted a two-car convoy carrying top Hizbullah officials and a general of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard at the Al-Amal farms in the Quneitra district of Syria in the Eastern Golan Heights. The strike killed seven people.

Hizbullah military commander and chief of operations in southern Syria Mohamed Issa and Jihad Mughniyah, son of Imad Mughniyeh and a member of Hizbullah, were among the casualties of the strike. The Israeli attack also killed Iranian Brigadier General Mohamed Ali Allahdadi, who was a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Al-Quds Force.

15 December 2016: Mohamed Zouari, a Tunisian aerospace engineer who helped develop the Ababil drone used by Hamas, was shot around 20 times in his car in a drive-by shooting. Zouari had got in his car and was about to drive away when a truck blocked the road.

21 April 2018: Two gunmen opened fire on Hamas commander Fadi Mohamed Al-Batsh in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as he was heading for fajr prayers. After his assassination, Al-Batsh was confirmed as a member of Hamas, while Israel claimed he had helped in designing and manufacturing munitions for the resistance group.

12 November 2019: A targeted airstrike killed Baha Abu Al-Ata, the leader of the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine (PIJ), along with his wife, injuring four of his children and a neighbour. An Israeli strike also targeted senior PIJ commander Akram Al-Ajouri in Damascus, Syria.

The assassinations triggered 48 hours of clashes between PIJ members and civilians angered at the murder of leading Palestinian resistance members. Thirty four people were killed in Gaza, and nine of them were civilians.

27 November 2020: While travelling to his weekend villa, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian nuclear physicist who was chief of Iran’s nuclear programme, exited his vehicle to check on a sound he had heard.

A remotely operated one-ton automated gun, which was smuggled into Iran one piece at a time and could self-destruct, opened fire targeting the Iranian physicist. Israeli agents were watching from a safe distance and observed as Fakhrizadeh exited his vehicle and then proceeded to kill the unarmed man.

22 May 2022: Iranian Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, a member of Iran’s Al-Quds Force, was returning home in southern Tehran when gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on him as he was exiting his car. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett later confirmed Israeli responsibility for the attack.

13 October 2023: A drone attack killed Ali Al-Qadi, a senior Hamas commander in the Nukhba Special Forces. Al-Qadi was the first senior commander to die as of the start of the Israeli war on Gaza.

25 December 2023: An Israeli airstrike targeted and killed Razi Mousavi, an Iranian officer in the Al-Quds Force, in Sayyidah Zaynab, Rif-Dimashq, Syria. Mousavi was described as the most influential Iranian officer in Syria at the time of his death.

2 January 2024: An Israeli strike killed Saleh Al-Arouri in the Dahieh neighbourhood of Beirut. The attack also killed six others. Al-Arouri was a senior commander in Hamas, a founding member of the Al-Qassam Brigades, and the commander of the Brigades in the West Bank. Al-Arouri was the most high-profile Hamas member killed by Israel at this time of the war.

8 January 2024: An Israeli airstrike targeted a vehicle carrying Wissam Al-Tawil, a senior commander of Hizbullah’s special Radwan Unit. The strike killed him and another person. He was the highest-ranking member of Hizbullah to be killed at the time of his death, and his assassination increased tensions between Hizbullah and Israel.

9 January 2024: While attending Al-Tawil’s funeral, an Israeli strike killed the commander of Hizbullah’s aerial forces in Southern Lebanon Ali Hussein Barji.

20 January 2024: An Israeli airstrike on the Syrian capital Damascus killed a senior Iranian general and four other top military officials. Sadegh Omidzadeh, the head of the Al-Quds Force intelligence unit in Syria, was among those killed when Israeli warplanes targeted a building in the Mezzeh district of Damascus. At least 10 other people were also killed in that attack.

10 March 2024: Israel announced the targeting of an underground facility in Nuseirat, central Gaza, used by Marwan Issa, a senior Hamas military leader. It released footage of the strike, stating that the results were still being analysed. The bombing reportedly killed five Palestinians. Hamas confirmed in private that Issa had been killed in the strike. At the time of his death, Issa was the highest-ranking Hamas commander to be killed in the ongoing conflict.

1 April 2024: An Israeli airstrike that targeted the consular annex building adjacent to the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria, killed Mohamed Reza Zahedi, a senior figure within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and commander of the Al-Quds Force in Lebanon and Syria. The strike caused “massive destruction” to the consular building as well as damage to neighbouring buildings, including the Canadian Embassy.

13 July 2024: Israel launched a massive bombardment of the Al-Mawasi Refugee Camp, killing at least 90 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring another 289. Israel claimed it was targeting the head of the Al-Qassam Brigades Mohamed Deif. The killing of Deif marked the continuation of Israel’s policy of ignoring the civilian death toll and collateral damage in its operations. Deif had been the victim of at least seven assassination attempts by Israeli forces

30 July 2024: Israeli airstrikes targeted southern Beirut killing Hizbullah’s second-in-command Fouad Shukr. At least one other person was killed in the strike. The killing of Shukr pushed Hizbullah to the edge of war with Israel, as the Lebanese group had been trying to avoid all-out war and had even agreed to engage in talks.

31 July 2024: An unprecedented Israeli airstrike targeting a special governmental residence in Tehran killed Ismail Haniyeh, chief of Hamas’ political bureau. The killing of Haniyeh elicited unprecedented anger from Iran, which in turn vowed to respond.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 8 August, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly