The Israeli Army admitted the failure of its mission to rescue the three hostages who were mistakenly shot in the Gaza Strip on December 15, after publishing this Thursday an investigation with more details of the incident.
“The Israeli forces failed in their mission to rescue the hostages” and “the entire chain of command feels responsible,” said the Chief of the General Staff, Herzi Halevi, in the conclusions of the investigations carried out by the Army released this Thursday.
According to Halevi, “the attacks on the prisoners could have been avoided,” because “in a situation where there is no immediate threat and no clear enemy is identified, a moment of consideration is necessary before shooting.”
This is necessary to avoid, among other things, incidents in which Israeli forces shoot at themselves, the chief of the General Staff added.
In the case of the three dead hostages, he acknowledged that “they were not moving in a threatening manner and were carrying a white flag”, so it would have been “correct to confirm the identification before shooting”, but “the pressure conditions and the environment operation made it difficult for the soldiers to apply these measures.
However, the Israeli army is not expected to take disciplinary action against the soldiers who killed the three hostages.
According to the military investigation, one of the hostages, Yotam Haim, was shot a quarter of an hour after soldiers in the Shijayia neighborhood of Gaza City had already shot the other two hostages, Samer Talalka and Alon Shamriz.
According to investigations, Haim fled after the other two prisoners were shot and “approximately 15 minutes later, the battalion commander heard screams in Hebrew asking for ‘help.'”
He then “gave orders to cease fire, shouting in Hebrew ‘come to us,'” after which the hostage “emerged from a building toward the Israeli forces,” but “two soldiers, who did not heed the order” to stop shooting . “Due to the noise of a nearby tank, he was shot dead.”
According to the investigation, before being killed by mistake, the hostages “were shirtless and one of them was waving a white flag, standing at a point of limited visibility in relation to the position of the soldier who shot.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with their relatives this Thursday and assured them that he continues negotiating to free them.
“We are maintaining contacts at this very moment. I cannot detail the situation. We are working to return them all,” Netanyahu told the families of more than a hundred hostages in the Gaza Strip.
However, a senior Hamas official reiterated this Thursday that they will not be released until Israel stops its offensive in the Strip.
A march of young Israelis arrived in Jerusalem this Thursday, where they demanded the Government release the hostages and called for Netanyahu’s resignation.
In their attack on Israel on October 7, which left more than 1,200 dead, the Palestinian militias of the Hamas movement took 240 hostages to the Gaza Strip.
In total, 110 hostages were released alive and Israel recovered the bodies of eleven others, including the three mistakenly killed. On the other hand, of the 129 who are estimated to remain kidnapped, 22 are considered dead.
This Thursday the death of Judith Weinstein Haggai, an Israeli-American woman who was a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz and who was discovered to have died during the Hamas attack on October 7, but whose body is still in Palestinian territory, was announced. .
Following the Hamas attack, Israel launched a large-scale offensive against the Gaza Strip that has already killed 21,300 people, mostly civilians, according to local authorities controlled by the Islamist movement, and displaced 1.9 million people, according to the UN. .
Source: TSF
