Competing over killing civilians: Haaretz exposes IOF Gaza violations
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Israeli soldiers speak of the IOF spokesperson’s statements turning into a competition between the forces: "If the division kills 99 or 150, the next division in line will try to reach 200.”
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A photo shows an Israeli soldier operating in the Gaza Strip (AFP)
Buildings that are marked as residences of Resistance fighters or "enemy deployment sites" in the Gaza Strip continue to appear on the army’s target list even after they have been attacked, the military affairs correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Yaniv Kubovich, revealed.
This, according to Kubovich, makes civilians who enter the same building prone to attacks and labeled as “terrorists” after they are killed by IOF fire.
Kubovich acknowledged that the Israeli army “is not accustomed to updating the target list in the Gaza Strip,” including the buildings that are no longer used by the Resistance, which means that anyone - even if they are not involved in acts of resistance - who enters the same building may be attacked by the IOF and labeled a “terrorist” after being killed, even if there is no longer any activity by the Resistance in the area.
He refuted the Israeli military claim since the beginning of the war that the number of Resistance fighters killed only included those who were confirmed to be fighters, asserting that “the testimonies of Israeli occupation soldiers who served in the Gaza Strip paint a strikingly different reality."
The Israeli journalist quoted an officer from an attack unit in an Israeli brigade, who participated in several rounds of fighting in the Gaza Strip, as saying that the instructions were that “the house of a fighter will continue to be considered as such even if he was killed six months ago,” but he claimed, according to the newspaper, that the IOF only started adopting this approach after realizing that Resistance fighters return to their homes and deployment points even if they were attacked.
Such attacks target anyone even those seeking shelter or a place to hide at the structure in question, according to the officer.
In the Netzarim corridor area, he said, the order was to target anyone who entered a building, “regardless of who he was or if he was just looking for shelter from the rain.”
The extensive investigation published by Haaretz yesterday, based on testimonies from soldiers and officers who served in the Gaza Strip, found that the area around the Netzarim corridor had become “a killing zone – and anyone who entered it was shot and killed.”
“For the division, the killing zone extends as far as a sniper’s sight can reach,” said an officer in the 252nd Division, which was stationed along the axis at some point, adding, “We are killing civilians there, and they are labeled saboteurs.”
He described a grim reality whereby the deliberate killing turned into some sort of competition between the occupation forces, detailing how the IOF spokesperson’s statements about the number of fatalities caused by each unit, brigade, and division “have turned into a competition between the forces. If the division kills 99 or 150, the next division in line will try to reach 200.”
Haaretz admitted that the Israeli army also intensified its attacks on the Mawasi area of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, an area that the "army itself defines as a humanitarian zone," but it never refrained from attacking it, even after turning it into a huge tent city filled with hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
It confirmed that the Israeli occupation has increased the pace of its attacks, estimating that dozens were killed in the area.
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