A highly decorated former Israeli defense minister has caused a stir by accusing his country of carrying out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in northern Gaza.
Moshe Ya’alon – who served for three decades in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), including in the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit, and as chief of the military General Staff – also said he believed Israel was losing its identity as a liberal democracy and becoming a “corrupt messianic fascist state”.
“Conquest, annexation, ethnic cleansing: look at northern Gaza,” Ya’alon told Israel’s Democrat TV channel.
The interviewer seemed surprised by Ya’alon’s use of the term “ethnic cleansing” and asked, “Is that what you think, that we’re heading in that direction?”
“Why walking?” he replied. “What’s going on there? There is no Beit Lahya. There is no Beit Hanoun. They are currently operating in Jabalia and are essentially clearing the area of Arabs,” he said, referring to the IDF.
Israeli military forces have been engaged in an intense and deadly operation in northern Gaza for two months against what they consider to be a return of Hamas fighters. The army also told all civilians to go to a humanitarian area in southern Gaza for their own safety.
According to the World Food Programme, almost no aid deliveries were allowed into northern Gaza.
The Israeli Armed Forces, in response to Ya’alon, denied that they were carrying out ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza and stated that they were acting “in accordance with international law and evacuating civilians based on operational necessity for their own protection.”
Israel has not yet presented a plan for governing Gaza after the war and has also denied that it is following a “surrender or starve” proposal in northern Gaza put forward by a retired military general, Giora Eiland, although it has considered the plan.
“I was confronted with the statements of many ministers and members of the Knesset (Parliament) in the Government,” Ya’alon said in a second interview, with Channel 12. “Ethnic cleansing is effectively taking place; I don’t have another phrase for it.”
The interviewer said that this phrase evoked “dark periods” in history.
“It’s true, and I used this term on purpose to generate alarm,” replied the former Defense Minister.
This content was originally published in Former Defense Minister accuses Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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