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Admission on captives killed by Israeli air raid ‘an embarrassment'
It’s quite a significant admission from the Israeli army, which says it had no information or intelligence that there were captives who were being held in this area, after it conducted an air strike on November 10 saying it was targeting a Hamas official.
There have been a series of significant intelligence and security failures by the Israeli military throughout this war, the most notable of them back in December when the Israeli army shot and killed three captives in the Gaza Strip.
The news is not being received quite well because there are families of captives calling for a deal, fearing this exact type of thing.
It is certainly an embarrassment on all scales, not just politically but security-wise as well, that the army made this admission so many months later.
Israel’s army has previously killed its own citizens
The Israeli military’s announcement that there is a “high probability” three captives held in Gaza were killed by an Israeli air raid is not the first time Israel has admitted to killing its own citizens.
Previously, on December 15, the Israeli military said that its troops killed another three captives when it mistook their cries for help as a ruse by Palestinian fighters to draw them into an ambush.
The military concluded that the soldiers acted rightly to the best of their understanding.
The three men – Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samar Talalka – were in the Shujayea area of Gaza City and had removed their shirts as one of them was waving a white flag when they were killed.
Meanwhile, an investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz found in July that the army had deployed its so-called Hannibal Directive, which allows it to use all necessary force to prevent the capture of soldiers, on October 7 following the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel.
This resulted in the loss of both civilian and military lives, Haaretz said.
It also found that Israeli commanders ordered the protocol’s deployment without any caveat or further clarification during a chaotic response to the events of October 7, when Hamas fighters attacked army outposts and surrounding villages in southern Israel.
‘It’s either you are with the captives or with the government’
The discovery today that the Israeli military may have killed three Israeli captives in Gaza last year will not change Netanyahu’s priorities, according to Akiva Eldar, an Israeli political analyst and author.
“For him, this is a kind of, I’m sorry to say, collateral damage, as well as the 40,000 Palestinians that were killed, as well as the price that Israel is paying in the international arena,” Eldar told Al Jazeera from Le Havre, France.
“He knows that as long as the Israeli soldiers are in the combat field in Gaza, there will be Israeli fatalities. As long as the Israeli Air Force is bombing Gaza, the bombs cannot tell who is a captive and who is Hamas,” he added.
The captives, in fact, are a nuisance for Netanyahu, according to the analyst.
“What [Netanyahu] does best is divide and rule. This is what he’s been doing for the last 15 years, and he keeps doing this,” said Eldar, adding that the Israeli leader’s allies are the ones making arrests of protesters.
“It’s either you are with the captives or with the government.”
Captives’ killings, ongoing mass protests will still not impact outcome of Gaza war: Analyst
The revelation that Israel likely killed another three captives held in Gaza will hardly make a difference in ending the war in Gaza, according to an analyst.
While the killings are further evidence that military pressure has failed to bring back Israeli captives home alive, it is a strategy that Netanyahu is resolute about, said Gideon Levy, a columnist at the Israeli daily Haaretz.
Additionally, anger against the Israeli leader is still largely only coming from the opposition in Israel, Levy said.
“That’s the camp that you see on TV protesting every week, with devotion every day … that’s the camp that does anything possible to make [Netanyahu] resign,” Levy told Al Jazeera from Tel Aviv.
“But it’s just part of the picture, because those who support Netanyahu, their support is totally solid, and nothing will change it. Whatever Netanyahu will do, they will support it.”
Additionally, the protesters “want the end of the war in order to release the hostages, and then part of them will be happy to renew the war, which will bring us to the same place again”, the columnist said.
Netanyahu, therefore, is able to continue waging the war with the support of public opinion, and with the protests having very little impact, Levy said.
