TEL
AVIV — On Saturday, Israeli Occupation Forces said three Israeli three hostages
mistakenly killed by Israeli troops had been shirtless, unarmed, and bearing a
makeshift white flag. The troubling details of how they died have created
widespread anguish and prompted renewed calls for a pause in the fighting to
allow more hostages to be released.
اضافة اعلان
The
military, which acknowledged that the killings violated its rules of
engagement, announced the deaths Friday, hours after saying it had recovered
the bodies of three other Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip.
Lt.
Gen. Herzi Halevy, the IOF chief of staff, said Saturday that the three
hostages had done “everything so that we would understand” that they were
harmless, including removing their shirts to show they bore no explosives.
“The
shooting of the hostages was carried out contrary to the open-fire
regulations,” he said. “It is forbidden to shoot at those who raise a white
flag and seek to surrender.”
As
the death toll of Palestinians killed in 70 days of war soared to nearly
20,000, according to Gaza health officials, the shootings of the Israeli
hostages underlined the continuing risks for the more than 120 people who
Israel says are still captive and raised questions about Israel’s prosecution
of the war.
Some
families of the hostages seized on the shootings to urge the government to make
securing the captives’ freedom its highest priority.
Itzik
Horn, whose children Eitan, 37, and Yair, 45, were abducted from Kibbutz Nir
Oz, said the killings reinforced his belief that Israel must immediately reach
a deal to free all the captives, even if it means releasing Palestinians being
held in Israeli jails.
“Let
them free all the Palestinian prisoners we have here, all the terrorists — what
do I care,” Horn said in an interview. “The most important thing is not to
defeat Hamas. The only victory here is to bring back all the hostages.”
“It is forbidden to shoot at those who raise a white flag and seek to surrender.”
As
Israelis took to the streets to demand the return of the hostages, David
Barnea, the head of Mossad, Israel’s spy service, met with Qatari officials
Friday in Europe to discuss the possibility of a renewed pause in the fighting
and further exchanges of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. The
meeting had been planned before the death of the hostages.
Describing
the results of a preliminary inquiry, the Israeli military said Saturday that
its soldiers had been operating in Shejaiya, an area of Gaza City that had seen
intense fighting. The soldiers were on alert for attempts by Hamas to ambush
Israeli forces, possibly in civilian clothes, the military said.
The
three hostages emerged without shirts from a building tens of yards away from
the Israeli soldiers, bearing a stick with a white cloth, the military said.
One soldier, believing the men posed a threat, opened fire, killing two of them
and wounding the third, the early investigation found.
The
third hostage fled into the building, from which a cry in Hebrew for help could
be heard, the military said. The battalion commander ordered the forces to hold
their fire. But the wounded hostage later reemerged, after which he was fatally
shot, the military statement said.
The
hostages may have escaped or had been abandoned by their captors, said an
Israeli military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under
military protocol.
All
three men killed — identified by the military as Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz, and
Samer Talalka — were kidnapped on Oct. 7 from two kibbutzim in southern Israel
near the Gaza border.
“Let them free all the Palestinian prisoners we have here, all the terrorists — what do I care, ... The most important thing is not to defeat Hamas. The only victory here is to bring back all the hostages.”
Talalka’s
monthslong captivity and sudden killing were like “a bad dream that I keep
trying to wake up from,” Alaa Talalka, his cousin, said in an interview
Saturday.
On
Friday, the family was celebrating the birthday of Samer Talalka’s mother, a
small point of light amid the crisis prompted by his abduction.
Then
came the news he had been fatally shot by occupation forces in Gaza.
“He
was so sociable and friendly; he loved to laugh and make people happy,” said
Alaa Talalka, 37, a psychologist from the Arab town of Hura in the southern
Negev desert. “I can’t fathom what’s happened.”
As
Israelis mourned their deaths Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu said the news of their killing “broke my heart.” He added: “It broke
the entire country’s heart. Our heart goes out to the families in their time of
deep mourning.”
But
he stressed: “At this difficult time, it is important for me to stand by our
soldiers. They are giving their lives to achieve a crushing victory over our
enemies and return our hostages. We are doing — and will do — everything to
safeguard the lives of our soldiers, every one of them.”
IOF
has come under widespread international criticism for what US President Joe
Biden described last week as indiscriminate bombing. In 10 weeks of war, Israel
has struck more than 22,000 targets in the Gaza Strip, a barrage that has
killed thousands of civilians, prompting U.N. Secretary-General António
Guterres last month to describe Gaza as a “graveyard for children.”
Palestinians
and critics of how Israel has been fighting in Gaza have called Friday’s
shootings a small example of the Israeli military’s disregard for civilians in
Gaza.
“Under
the laws of war, people are presumed to be civilians,” said Sari Bashi, program
director at Human Rights Watch. “There needs to be strong information to
suggest they are not before you can kill them.”
In
this case, she said, “Nobody batted an eye before killing them.” She added that
the investigation came only because the men were Israelis.
“A bad dream that I keep trying to wake up from,”
Akram
Attaallah, a columnist for Al-Ayyam, a Palestinian newspaper in the West Bank,
said that the episode was a “condemnation of the IOF” and showed that
occupation forces were fighting the war with little regard for civilian life.
“Israel
kills even those who surrender and raise the white flag,” said Attaallah, who
is from Gaza.
Israel
says it seeks to limit civilian casualties and places blame for the high death
totals in Gaza on Hamas, which it says puts military installations in civilian
areas as well as in schools, mosques, and hospitals.
The
Israeli military has said that approximately 20 percent of Israeli soldiers who
have died in the war have been killed by its forces in airstrikes, shelling,
gunfire, and accidents, many because of mistaken identification. As of
Saturday, 119 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza.
Yagil
Levy, a civil-military relations expert at the Open University of Israel,
described the 20 percent rate of so-called friendly-fire mistakes as
“unprecedented” for the Israeli military.
“Israel kills even those who surrender and raise the white flag,”
Also
killed in the war have been 135 staff members of the United Nations and 64
journalists and news media workers, according to the Committee to Protect
Journalists, a nonprofit organization based in New York.
Over
the past week, the Israeli military has described intense urban warfare in
Gaza; nine Israeli soldiers were killed Tuesday while trying to rescue wounded
troops in Shejaiya, the same neighborhood of Gaza City where the three hostages
were killed Friday.
Alongside
the fighting, U.N. officials have described scenes of chaos, starvation, and
utter despair in Gaza among the territory’s 2.2 million people, most of whom
have been forced to flee their homes.
Philippe
Lazzarini, who leads the U.N. agency charged with aiding Palestinians, traveled
to Gaza last week. He described the strip as a “living hell.”
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