A former Israeli defense minister has accused his country of committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, in rare criticism from Israel’s own security community about military operations in the Palestinian enclave.
Moshe Yaalon said the Israeli government was putting the lives of Israel Defense Forces soldiers in danger and exposing them to lawsuits at the International Criminal Court, in an interview with the Reshet Bet radio station on Sunday.
“I speak on behalf of commanders who serve in northern Gaza,” he said. “War crimes are being committed here.”
In a separate interview with Democrat TV on Saturday, he said that the Israeli government was seeking “to conquer, to annex, to carry out ethnic cleansing.”
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Hard-liners want to re-establish Jewish settlements in Gaza, he said, including in northern areas where civilians have been urged to leave indefinitely as the Israeli military prepares to move against Hamas fighters who have regrouped.
“What is going on there? There is no Beit Lahiya, no Beit Hanoun, they are operating now in Jabalia and basically cleaning the area of Arabs,” Yaalon said.
The Israel Defense Forces and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Yaalon was the IDF’s chief of staff during the second intifada, or “uprising” by Palestinians against Israeli occupation, which ended in 2005. He also served as defense minister from 2013 to 2016, including during a 2014 war in Gaza that lasted more than six weeks and had been the longest conflict between Israel and Hamas until the current one.
He quit in 2016, saying he no longer had faith in Netanyahu, and has been a fierce critic of the prime minister ever since.
Netanyahu’s allies were quick to condemn Yaalon’s remarks.
Yoav Gallant, who served as Israel’s defense minister until he was fired by Netanyahu last month, said Yaalon’s words were “a lie that helps our enemy and harms Israel.”
During Israel’s war against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, “the IDF acted in accordance with the highest standards that can be applied in the complex and difficult war that was forced upon us. The instructions and orders were always given in accordance with the law,” Gallant said in a post on X.
“I suggest that Yaalon not be ashamed of his security past, learn the facts, take his words back and apologize to IDF fighters,” he added.
Netanyahu’s Likud party, of which Yaalon is a former member, said Yaalon was spreading “slanderous lies.”
Yaalon’s comments came after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant last month over alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu’s office rejected the accusations as “absurd and false” and branded the decision “antisemitic,” while also condemning the ICC as a “biased and discriminatory political body.”
Israeli politicians from a range of parties have united in their opposition to the arrest warrants.
The Biden administration also rejects the arrest warrants but has warned of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where Israel has allowed little aid to enter in recent months.
More than 44,000 people have been killed and more than 100,000 wounded since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023, with Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. About 1,200 people were killed in that attack, while about 100 people who were taken hostage are still being held captive in Gaza more than a year later, according to Israeli tallies. Around a third of them are thought to be dead.
The fighting has also displaced almost all of Gaza’s population of 2 million.
The U.N. Human Rights Office has condemned the high number of civilian deaths in Gaza, saying in a report last month that almost 70% of the victims it verified in the six months to April 30 of this year were women and children.
Israel’s diplomatic mission to the U.N. in Geneva rejected the report, saying it did not reflect the reality on the ground or the role that Hamas and other terrorist groups play in deliberating causing harm to civilians in Gaza.
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