'The End of Dreams'; Ariel Sharon's new initiative, endorsed by President Bush, is a scheme to better manage the conflict, not to make peace. Targeted killings will be a big part of that.

Publication: Newsweek

Publication Date: 26-APR-04

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Byline: Joshua Hammer, With Joanna Chen in Jerusalem

Maj. Gen. Yisrael Ziv first tried to kill Sheik Ahmed Yassin last September. He remembers the day well, and with some regret. As Israel's chief of military operations, Ziv had ordered an airstrike on the three-story building in Gaza City where the Hamas spiritual leader was meeting with his inner circle. Huddled with other Israeli commanders around a screen that displayed real-time satellite imagery, Ziv watched as an F-16 jet unloaded a 250-kilogram bomb on the target. Ziv was worried; at the last minute he had reduced the size of the bomb by half, hoping to lower the chance of civilian deaths. "We saw in a few seconds that people were pouring out through the smoke," Ziv told NEWSWEEK, still rueful that he hadn't used a bigger bomb. "We learned very soon that Yassin had survived." Six months after that, an Israeli missile blew Yassin apart...

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