On the heels of my last post, I now turn to a second geography of drones: how much do drones matter in Israel?

Last Tuesday  (April 30) the Israeli Defense Force targeted and killed Hitham Masshal, a twenty-four year old described by the IDF Spokesperson as a “global jihad-affiliated terrorist”. It was the first targeted killing of a Palestinian in 2013. As many Israeli friends have been quick to point out to me over the last week, an Israeli settler was also killed on that day, stabbed while waiting for a bus near the Palestinian town of Nablus. There are a number of differences between these killings, not least the weapons which were used, but I want to use this as an opportunity to reflect on a state-policy that has been publicly acknowledged for over a decade (see here).

Since September 29th 2000, Israel has killed 438 Palestinians using the method of targeted killing…