Israel committing ‘war crimes’ – former defense minister

Moshe Yaalon once supported the occupation of Gaza, but now accuses Benjamin Netanyahu of “ethnic cleansing”

Former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of plotting the “ethnic cleansing” of Gaza and claimed that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops are carrying out “war crimes” in the Palestinian enclave.

Israel has been battling Hamas militants in Gaza for over a year. The conflict has killed almost 45,000 people and displacing nearly all of the densely populated territory’s residents. In recent weeks, Israel has focused much of its firepower on northern Gaza, issuing an evacuation order covering large swathes of the region last weekend.

This evacuation order is an attempt to hide the ongoing “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians, Yaalon claimed on Sunday.

“I am compelled to warn about what is happening there and is being concealed from us,” he told Israel’s Kan broadcaster. “At the end of the day, war crimes are being committed,” he added, citing information supposedly provided by IDF commanders in Gaza.

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“The path they’re dragging us down is to occupy, annex, and ethnically cleanse. What is going on there? There is no Beit Lahia, no Beit Hanoun, they are operating now in Jabalia and basically cleaning the area of Arabs,” he said in a separate interview with Democrat TV on Saturday, referring to several neighborhoods inside the evacuation zone.

Yaalon served as the IDF’s chief of staff during the Second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising that began in 2000 and ended after the Sharm El Sheikh peace summit in 2005. He went on to serve as Netanyahu’s defense minister from 2013 until 2016, overseeing Israel’s six-week war in Gaza in 2014. Since leaving office, he has become an ardent critic of Netanyahu.

Although Yaalon opposed Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, he has criticized the “hardliners” in Netanyahu’s cabinet for plotting the resettlement of the enclave. Netanyahu has been reluctant to reveal his plan for post-war Gaza, but some members of his cabinet have openly declared their desire to depopulate and resettle the territory.

During a visit to the Gaza border last week, Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf posed with a map of proposed Israeli developments in Gaza, telling reporters that “Jewish settlement here is the answer to the terrible massacre and the answer to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.” 

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Earlier this year, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir both called for Gaza’s population to be reduced tenfold through forced emigration, while a leaked policy document compiled by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence urged Netanyahu to permanently occupy Gaza and resettle its estimated 2.3 million people in Egypt, the Gulf states, and Europe.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued warrants for the arrest of Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant last month, accusing them of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.

In a statement on Monday, the IDF said that it “rejects the serious claims of ethnic cleansing” by Yaalon, insisting that it issues evacuation orders temporarily and “in accordance with the operational need.” Netanyahu’s Likud party accused Yaalon, a former member, of spreading “slanderous lies,” while Gallant demanded that the former minister “retract his words and apologize to the IDF soldiers.”