Israeli military officials have said there are no restrictions on bombing homes in Gaza, days after a prominent right-wing TV channel claimed that the country’s military advocate general prevented an air strike on a building – where four soldiers later died – due to the risk of killing Palestinian civilians.
On 6 June, four Israeli soldiers died after the building they entered in Khan Younis collapsed due to an explosive device.
The Israeli army is still probing the cause of the blast and has yet to determine whether the device was a booby-trap set up by Hamas or if it was unexploded Israeli ordinance.
But within hours of the deaths, Israel’s Channel 14, a right-wing network favoured by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed that Israel’s military advocate general bore responsibility for the deaths.
The channel, which has repeatedly portrayed Palestinians in Gaza as “animals” who must be “exterminated”, reported that the army had sent the soldiers into the building rather than target it with an air strike because Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi had changed army protocol to prohibit striking the structure.
In its televised report, Channel 14’s Noam Amir spoke with a senior Israeli officer who claimed that the building had been designated as a Hamas compound but Tomer-Yerushalmi prevented the country’s air force from bombing the structure due to the risk of “collateral damage”,
The Israeli army tends to use the term “collateral damage” when referring to Palestinian civilians who are killed by Israeli forces for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“We knew the infrastructure, we knew who was there, and we didn’t strike, each time for a different reason – high collateral damage,” the officer said.
Following the report, the Israeli army’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, launched a scathing attack on Channel 14, saying he rejected the “false, repeated, and baseless attacks regarding the conduct of the military advocate general.”
“There was no directive from the military advocate general not to strike the building that collapsed and led to the deaths of four soldiers in Khan Younis on Friday,” he said.
“The claims made in this context are false, malicious, and entirely unfounded.”
He added that Israeli forces operating in Gaza have complete “operational freedom to remove threats”.
Ben Caspit, a senior Israeli journalist who has repeatedly clashed with Netanyahu, also slammed the report, suggesting it was a blood libel.
“This despicable report, which titles itself with pride as an ‘expose’, is bloodshed, libel at the highest level, a crazy fable that has nothing to do with reality,” Caspit wrote on X.
Citing military sources, Caspit said that there were “no orders” being issued by Tomer-Yerushalmi, and that Israeli soldiers were freely “blowing up” homes in the war-battered enclave.
“They [Israeli soldiers] are blowing up Gaza, house by house, compound by compound, without any interference by any Chief Military Advocate,” Caspit added.
‘They won’t come back for years’
Since declaring its war on Gaza in October 2023, Israel has obliterated most of the Gaza Strip, reducing entire neighbourhoods, including schools, businessess and medical facilities, to rubble.
Israeli soldiers and combat engineers have laid explosives and triggered controlled demolitions inside countless homes, while armoured bulldozers have systematically levelled building after building.
Last week, a senior army commander operating in Khan Younis said that Israeli forces were instructed to decimate the city, reducing the likelihood that Palestinians would remain in the Strip once the war ends.
“Part of the operation is to go in thoroughly and deeply, which may seem slow, but it protects our forces, and unlike before, it literally destroys the zone,” the officer told the Israeli news outlet Ynet.
“After we finish here, they won’t be able to come back here for years,” added the officer about Khan Younis, which was one of the largest cities in the Gaza Strip before the war.
In the wake of the criticism, Channel 14’s Amir fumed that a “reckless” Zamir had had failed to “substantively” address the claims laid out in the report.
“When the war began, the [Israeli army] acted even when there were non-combatants in the area. There were no legal guidelines at all,” Amir wrote.
“Only at a later stage did the chief military advocate arrive, formulated the procedures, and determined when it is permissible to attack and when it’s not,” he added.
Meanwhile, several members from Netanyahu’s coalition requested a meeting with the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee regarding guidelines on when air strikes can and can’t be carried out.
Since reneging on a ceasefire deal with Hamas, Israeli forces have killed at least 4,600 Palestinians in attacks targeting tents, hospitals and school-turned-shelters.
According to the Gaza health ministry, at least 54,981 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023, including more than 28,000 women and girls.
The figure also includes at least 1,400 health sector professionals, 280 UN aid workers – the highest staff death toll in UN history – and 227 journalists, the highest number of media workers killed in conflict since the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) began recording data in 1992.
Source: MEE
