The government, headed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, agreed Monday to establish a committee to investigate the 2002 targeted killing of senior Hamas terrorist Salah Shehadeh in Gaza. The committee will determine whether or not IDF officials are guilty of criminal behavior in the case. 
The decision to establish an investigative committee was made despite the state's position.
The government's announcement comes in response to a court order issued in June that the state must come to a decision regarding establishment of the investigative panel. The order was the interim result of a petition filed in 2003 with the High Court of Justice by the far-left Yesh Gvul organization, along with several authors and poets, represented by attorneys Avigdor Feldman and Michael Sefard. The petitioners approached the High Court after the IDF chief prosecutor's office refused to initiate a public investigation into the legality of the Shehadeh assassination.
In his reply to the court, the state's attorney, Shai Nitzan, noted that the decision to establish an investigative committee was made despite the state's position that the case law does not support the petitioners' demands. The army initially conducted its own internal probe into the Shehadeh killing, but refused to make its findings public.
Shehadeh was the operational commander of the Hamas terrorist organization from 1999 until his death. In the two years leading up to his elimination alone, Shehadeh was responsible for the murders of at least 150 people and the wounding of thousands, including men, women and children targeted by suicide bombers dispatched by Hamas. An IDF airstrike on a Gaza building in 2002 killed Shehadeh, another Palestinian Authority terrorist, Shehadeh's wife and daughter, and 13 PA residents who were in or near the targeted building.
As one far-left organization won a legal victory in forcing the state to investigate the assassination of a Hamas terrorist leader, the head of a second far-left organization is calling for the release of a Fatah terrorist leader.
Uri Avnery, head of the Gush Shalom organization, has written an article calling on the Left to work for the release of Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti is currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for organizing terrorist attacks in which Israelis and other civilians were killed or wounded. In previous statements and articles, Avnery accused Israel of convicting Barghouti in a "show trial" and called the Fatah terrorist the "Palestinian Nelson Mandela."
Political analysts said Monday that Avnery might have chosen to begin his "free Barghouti" campaign now due to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's desire to make "gestures" to the Palestinian Authority leadership in the two months remaining until a planned Middle East peace conference in the United States. Olmert previously agreed to release hundreds of terrorist prisoners, leading to rumors that Barghouti would be among those set free.