JERUSALEM: A leading Israeli newspaper, citing unnamed soldiers serving in Gaza, described indiscriminate killings of Palestinian civilians in the territory’s Netzarim Corridor, prompting a firm rejection on Friday from the Israeli military.

Haaretz, a left-leaning Israeli daily that has faced severe criticism from the country’s right-wing government, quoted soldiers, career officers and reservists who said commanders were given unprecedented authority to operate in the Gaza Strip.

They alleged commanders had ordered or allowed the killing of unarmed women, children and men in the Netzarim Corridor, a seven-kilometre-wide strip of land that cuts across Gaza from Israel to the Mediterranean, and which has been turned into a military zone.

The report quoted an officer who recalled an incident in which a commander had announced that 200 militants were killed, when actually “only 10 were confirmed as known Hamas operatives”.

Hamas urges UN, ICJ to document soldiers’ testimonies

‘Everyone’s a terrorist’

Soldiers, meanwhile, told Haaretz they received questionable orders to open fire on “anyone who enters” Netzarim. “Anyone crossing the line is a terrorist — no exceptions, no civilians. Everyone’s a terrorist,” a soldier quoted a battalion commander as saying.

The soldiers also described how division commanders received “expanded powers” allowing them to bomb buildings or launch air strikes that previously required approval from the army’s top echelons.

Israeli military claimed that “all strikes in the area (of Netzarim) are conducted in accordance with the mandatory procedures and protocols, including targets that are struck in an urgent time frame due to essential operational circumstances where ground forces face immediate threats”.

“Incidents that give rise to concerns of deviations from IDF’s orders or ethical standards are thoroughly examined and addressed.” Many soldiers who spoke to Haaretz pointed to a specific commander, Brigadier General Yehuda Vach, who last summer took charge of Division 252, which has been based in Netzarim.

One of the soldiers said of Vach, who was born in the settlement of Kiryat Arba in the occupied West Bank, that “his worldview and political positions were clearly driving his operational decisions”.

Another soldier said Vach had declared “there are no innocents in Gaza”.

The military said that the “statements attributed to him … were not made by him”.

“Any claim asserting otherwise is entirely baseless.”

The Haaretz report said Israeli soldiers spoke to the newspaper so that the Israeli “people need to know how this war really looks like, and what serious acts some commanders and fighters are committing inside Gaza”.

“They need to know the inhuman scenes we’re witnessing”.

Palestinian group Hamas also reacted to the Haaretz report.

It said the testimonies offered “new evidence of unprecedented war crimes and full-fledged ethnic cleansing operations, carried out in an organised manner”.

Hamas demanded that the United Nations and the International Court of Justice “document these testimonies and take the necessary steps to stop the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip”.

Israeli minister slams pope

An Israeli government minister criticised Pope Francis for suggesting the international community to study whether Israel’s military offensive in Gaza constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.

In an open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio, Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli said the pope’s remarks — made in excerpts from an upcoming book that were published last month — amounted to a “trivialisation” of the term genocide.

“As a people who lost six million of its sons and daughters in the Holocaust, we are particularly sensitive to the trivialisation of the term ‘genocide’ — a trivialisation that comes dangerously close to Holocaust denial,” Chikli wrote.

Chikli, who ended the letter by calling Francis “a dear friend of the Jewish people”, asked the pope “to clarify your position regarding the new accusation of genocide against the Jewish state”.

The pope, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. In the book excerpts published by Italian daily La Stampa, the pontiff said some international experts said that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide”.

The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.

Authorities in the Gaza Strip say more than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 107,000 injured in Israel’s offensive, and most of the enclave’s more than two million people are homeless or displaced.

Published in Dawn, December 21st, 2024