ISRAELI soldiers have deliberately shot at unarmed Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza after being “ordered” to do so by their commanders, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports.
Israel ordered an investigation into possible war crimes over the allegations by some soldiers that it revealed on Friday, Haaretz said.
At least 549 Palestinians have been killed and 4,066 injured while waiting for food aid distributed at sites run by the Israeli-and United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the Gaza Government Media Office said on Thursday. The GHF has been a source of widespread criticism since its establishment in May.
According to the Haaretz report, which quoted unnamed Israeli soldiers, troops were told to fire at the crowds of Palestinians and use unnecessary lethal force against people who appeared to pose no threat.
“We fired machineguns from tanks and threw grenades,” one soldier told Haaretz. “There was one incident where a group of civilians was hit while advancing under the cover of fog.”
In another instance, a soldier said that where they were stationed in Gaza, between “one and five people were killed every day”.
“It’s a killing field,” that soldier said.
The Israeli army “strongly rejected” the accusations in the report, according to a military statement published on Telegram. “Any allegation of a deviation from the law or [military] directives will be thoroughly examined, and further action will be taken as necessary. The allegations of deliberate fire toward civilians presented in the article are not recognized in the field,” it said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz condemned the report, calling it “blood libel” on the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), according to a statement carried by The Times of Israel news outlet.
“The IDF operates under difficult conditions against a terrorist enemy that operates from within the civilian population,” they said. “IDF soldiers receive clear orders to avoid harming innocent civilians, and they act accordingly.”
According to Haaretz, the Military Advocate General has told the army’s General Staff’s Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism, which reviews incidents involving potential violations of the laws of war, to investigate suspected war crimes at these aid sites.
One of the authors of the report, Nir Hasson, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli directive to fire on civilians is part of a method to “control” the aid seekers.
“It’s actually a practice of … controlling the crowd by fire, like if you wanted the crowd to run off [from] a place, you shoot them at them, even though you know they are unarmed … You use fire to move people from one point to another,” he said from West Jerusalem.
While the journalist and his colleagues do not know the name of the commander who might have issued such a directive, Hasson said that he would likely hold a position high up in the army.
