A few months after the start of the war, the Israeli army killed 15,000 Palestinians and fired more than 30,000 rounds of ammunition into Gaza
The Israeli military has “severely weakened” its protocols for protecting civilians during military operations since the start of the war in Gaza, allowing mid-ranking officers to order indiscriminate air force strikes, according to a New York Times (NYT) investigation.
According to the NYT, officers were given the authority shortly after October 7 to risk the deaths of up to 20 civilians with each airstrike. The order had “no precedent” in Israel’s military history.
“Mid-level officers have never had so much leeway to attack so many targets, many of which were of lesser military importance, at such a high potential civilian cost,” the NYT said, adding that under this order, “the military could attack militants base, as they were at home, surrounded by relatives and neighbors”.
Previously, Israeli strikes were approved only after officials discovered that no civilians would be harmed. In some cases, the military had granted them the leeway to risk up to five civilian deaths. However, this has not prevented brutally deadly attacks on civilians in previous conflicts.
An anonymous military official told the NYT that Israel changed its protocol because it believed it was existentially threatened.
“Israel has severely weakened its safeguards system designed to protect civilians; adopted flawed methods for finding targets and assessing the risk of civilian casualties; routinely failed to conduct post-attack reviews of civilian injuries or punish officers for wrongdoing; and ignored warnings from within its own ranks and from senior U.S. military officials about these failures,” according to the investigation.
The NYT analyzed dozens of army records and conducted interviews with more than 100 Israeli soldiers and officials, including those who participated in selecting targets for airstrikes and raids.
As part of this loosening of protocol, Tel Aviv greatly expanded its target set for preemptive strikes and the number of civilians it could risk killing. As a result, nearly 30,000 rounds of ammunition were fired into the besieged Gaza Strip in the first seven weeks — more than the next eight months of the war combined, the NYT said.
“On some occasions, senior commanders approved attacks against Hamas leaders that they knew would endanger more than 100 non-combatants – crossing an extraordinary threshold for a contemporary Western army,” he added.
This policy has been evident throughout the war in Gaza. An attack in the northern strip in October this year resulted in the deaths of at least 100 Palestinians.
In early June, Israel launched an indiscriminate rescue operation in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza to rescue Noa Argamani and three other Israeli prisoners. Nearly 300 Palestinians were massacred in the process.
“The military attacked at a pace that made it more difficult to confirm they were hitting legitimate targets. They burned through much of a pre-war database of scanned targets in a few days and adopted an unproven system for finding new targets that used large-scale artificial intelligence,” the NYT investigation revealed.
Insufficient models to assess civil loss risk have been used repeatedly. In the first two months of the war, 15,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel.
At one point, military leadership “briefly ordered that its forces could cumulatively risk killing up to 500 civilians per day in pre-planned attacks.” That limit was removed two days later, allowing officials to order as many airstrikes as they “deem legal.”
Israeli newspaper Haaretz confirmed in a report earlier this week that low-ranking officers had been given the authority to order unprecedented deadly attacks.
“We, commanders and fighters, are participating in the atrocity unfolding in Gaza. Now, everyone must face this reality,” an anonymous official told the newspaper.
The report also discussed the Netzarim corridor, where Israel has divided Gaza into two parts to prevent the return of displaced civilians to the north, and where soldiers have established a “kill zone” in which anyone who moves is declared a terrorist.
The soldiers are “operating as independent militias, unconstrained by standard military protocols,” the report said.
With information from the New York Times, Haaretz and The Cradle*
Source: https://www.ocafezinho.com/2024/12/26/israel-mudou-protocolos-de-guerra-para-permitir-a-matanca-desenfreada/
