Yaalon accuses Israel of war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Gaza

2/12/2024 6:08

        A former Israeli defense
        minister has accused Israel of committing war crimes and ethnic
        cleansing in the Gaza Strip, drawing a sharp rebuke from
        government ranks.
        
        Moshe Yaalon, a hawkish former general, told Israeli media
        that hardliners in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right
        cabinet were looking to chase Palestinians from northern Gaza
        and wanted to re-establish Jewish settlements there.
        
        "I am compelled to warn about what is happening there and is
        being concealed from us," Yaalon told Israel's public
        broadcaster Kan on Sunday. "At the end of the day, war crimes
        are being committed."
        
        Yaalon is a former army chief of staff who served as defence
        minister under Netanyahu from 2013-16, and has been a fierce
        critic of the prime minister ever since.
        
        Netanyahu's Likud party accused him of spreading "slanderous
        lies", while Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar, head of a small
        rightist party, said his accusations were baseless.
        
        "Everything Israel does is in accordance with international
        law and it is a pity that former minister Ya'alon does not
        realise the damage that he has done and retract his remarks," he
        told a conference hosted by Israel Today newspaper.
        
        The International Criminal Court (ICC) last month issued
        arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence chief Yoav
        Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in
        the Gaza conflict.
        
        Netanyahu and Gallant both rejected the charges, but in a
        separate interview with Democrat TV on Saturday, Yaalon warned
        that the nation was at a crossroads with the government looking
        "to conquer, to annex, to carry out ethnic cleansing".
        
        
        
        SURPRISE ATTACK
        
        Palestinians have long accused Israel of looking to chase
        them out of swathes of Gaza during the ongoing conflict.
        
        Israel has been at war in Gaza since October 2023, after
        Hamas militants launched a surprise attack in which they killed
        about 1,200 people and abducted more than 250 hostages. Israel's
        military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,400 people and
        displaced nearly all of the enclave's population.
        
        In recent weeks, the Israelis have focused much of their
        firepower back on northern Gaza, saying they are targeting Hamas
        fighters who have regrouped, and urging civilians to leave the
        area until further notice.
        
        "What is going on there? There is no Beit Lahiya, no Beit
        Hanoun, they are operating now in Jabaliya and basically
        cleaning the area of Arabs," Yaalon told Democrat TV, referring
        to Palestinian neighbourhoods north of Gaza City.
        
        He added that hardliners wanted to establish Jewish
        settlement there, 19 years after Israel withdrew from the
        territory - a disengagement Yaalon had opposed at the time.
        
        Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf visited the Gaza border
        last Thursday and backed an initiative to re-establish
        settlements in the enclave.
        "Jewish settlement here is the answer to the terrible (Oct.
        7, 2023) massacre and the answer to the International Criminal
        Court in the Hague," Goldknopf was quoted as saying in Israeli
        media.
        
        Most world powers deem settlements built in territory Israel
        seized in the 1967 war as illegal and see their expansion as an
        obstacle to peace, since they eat away at land the Palestinians
        want for a future state.