UNITED NATIONS – Secretary-General Annan yesterday criticized one of the most potent weapons in the war against terrorism, saying he “has noted with concern” a spate of targeted killings by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank. Mr. Annan’s statement came after acting Prime Minister Olmert reportedly instructed the army to escalate its anti-terror campaign amidst renewed Palestinian Arab attacks.

The criticism of Israel’s targeted killings, which are considered instrumental to its success in reducing terrorist attacks in recent years, highlighted an ongoing debate about the application of international treaties to the war against terrorism. While Mr. Annan calls for countries to apply civil law to terrorists, Israel, as well as the Bush administration, sees them as dangerous combatants.

“The secretary-general has noted with concern that in recent days Israel has conducted several targeted killings in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” Mr. Annan’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement yesterday. “While recognizing Israel’s right to defend its citizens, targeted killings place innocent bystanders at grave risk and amount to executions without trial.”

The statement also “noted with concern the repeated rocket attacks against Israel emanating from the Gaza Strip,” and called on all parties “to respect international humanitarian law, and to refrain from actions that could lead to an escalation of violence.”

On Friday, Kassam rockets shot from Gaza into a cross-border kibbutz, Karmiya, and injured four, including an infant. In the city of Petach Tikva, near the West Bank, a man was stabbed to death this week, and four were injured by a knife-wielding Palestinian Arab who was later apprehended and arrested.

In response, Mr. Olmert instructed Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and the army’s commander in chief, Brigadier General Dan Halutz, to step up Israel’s anti-terror campaign.”You should act with no limits, using all available means, against Kassam shooters and against the terror infrastructure in the Shomron,” or the northern West Bank, Mr. Olmert said Sunday, according to the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv.

Yesterday, air force pilots killed two operatives of the Fatah’s military arm, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, shooting missiles from the air into Gaza Strip. Palestinian Arab sources quoted by Ha’aretz identified the dead as a top Fatah commander in Gaza, Muhammad Abu Sharia, and his top aide, Suheil Bakal. Altogether, nine terror leaders were killed by Israel in the last three days. No Palestinian Arab noncombatant casualties were reported by either side.

In one incident yesterday, an elite army unit attempted to arrest an Islamic Jihad operative, Ahmed Radar. A gun battle ensued after the Israeli troops surrounded Radar’s Nablus home, and two soldiers were injured. Radar, said by Israel to have been involved in planning a Tel Aviv suicide bombing two weeks ago, was killed. Before the exchange began, according to Ha’aretz’s account,the army allowed Radar’s wife and children to leave the house.

“We call them targeted killings specifically because they are targeted,” Israel’s ambassador to Canada, Alan Baker, told The New York Sun yesterday. A former legal adviser to the foreign ministry, Mr. Baker said that 1977 amendments to the Geneva Conventions were specifically designed to update international law in order to make it more applicable to the new accuracy of post-Vietnam weaponry.

“Attacks shall be limited strictly to military objectives,” the 1977 protocol’s Article 52 states. It defines military targets as “those objects which by their nature, location, purpose, or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture, or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.”

Israel has argued that increasingly accurate technology has made possible the targeting of terrorists and leaders, who clearly fit that description, while limiting damage to the civilian population, Mr. Baker said. That argument, he added, was also accepted by the American administration, which has used air attacks against terrorists in Yemen and, most recently, Pakistan.

Separately, Mr. Olmert yesterday said in his first nationwide televised interview since assuming office, “We will need to depart from the current borders.” His statement on Israel’s Channel Two strengthened the popular message of his centrist Kadima party, which stresses departures from areas where Arabs and Israeli populations are intermeshed. “We will have to depart from the majority of the Palestinian population, which lives in Judea and Samaria,” the prime ministerial candidate in the March 29 election said.

Another Kadima rising star, Zipi Livni, visited Washington on her first American trip as acting foreign minister yesterday, urging America and the international community to speak “in a loud and clear voice” in the need to pressure Hamas. Ms. Livni, who met with Jordan’s King Abdullah for an hour, is expected to meet Secretary of State Rice and Vice President Cheney today. The King will meet President Bush.