Two pro-Palestinian groups sued a former Israeli security chief who is in the United States on a fellowship. The Center for Constitutional Rights and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights served papers Wednesday night in New York in a class-action lawsuit against Avi Dichter, former director of Israel’s Shin Bet security service, on behalf of the families of Palestinians killed or injured in a 2002 air strike in the Gaza Strip. The groups allege that Dichter provided the intelligence necessary to carry out the bombing, which killed Hamas kingpin Salah Shehadeh but also killed eight children and seven adults and injured 150 people, the groups said in a statement. Dichter is a fellow at the Saban Center of the Brookings Institution, in Washington. An Israeli government inquiry into the assassination said it had prevented multiple terrorist attacks that Shehadeh was planning, and that it was carried out correctly. However, it said intelligence prior to the operation had “shortcomings” and that “conclusions were drawn with important implications for future operations, to avoid a recurrence.”
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