Targeted Killing
A Legal and Political History

Explores the emergence of targeted killing in Israeli and US statecraft, and in the international law of force.

Markus Gunneflo (Author)

9781107114852, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 May 2016

290 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.56 kg

'Markus Gunneflo's book shows how the normalization of targeted killing emerged through extensive legal work. Offering a meticulous account of history and practice, the book highlights the law and politics of protection in the dispute on killing to protect … Targeted Killing presents an urgent, excellent opportunity to understand and contest these practices and developments.' Nahed Samour, Völkerrechtsblog

Looking beyond the events of the second intifada and 9/11, this book reveals how targeted killing is intimately embedded in both Israeli and US statecraft, and in the problematic relationship between sovereign authority and lawful violence underpinning the modern state system. It details the legal and political issues raised in targeted killing as it has emerged in practice, including questions of domestic constitutional authority, the use of force in international law, the law of belligerent occupation, the law of targeting and human rights law. The distinctive nature of Israeli and US targeted killing is analysed in terms of the compulsion of legality characteristic of the liberal constitutional state, a compulsion that demands the ability to distinguish between legal 'targeted killing' and extra-legal 'political assassination'. The effect is a highly legalized framework for the extraterritorial killing of designated terrorists that may significantly affect the international law of force.

1. Targeted killing in the history of Israel, the United States and international law
2. The emergence of targeted killing in the Israeli-Palestinian Common Entrapment of Enmity
3. The emergence of targeted killing in an American homeland which is the planet
4. Targeted killing and the struggle over international law's sanctioning of lethal force
5. The law of targeted killing.

Subject Areas: Laws of Specific jurisdictions [LN], International human rights law [LBBR], Public international law [LBB], Comparative law [LAM], War & defence operations [JWL], Theory of warfare & military science [JWA], Armed conflict [JPWS], Military history: post WW2 conflicts [HBWS]