The former deputy director of Israel’s National Security Council, Eran Etzion, has become the highest-ranking former Israeli official to formally charge that Israel is carrying out a massive war crime. According to the Oct. 22 report in the Times of Israel, Etzion stated that Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet voted in secret to implement the notorious “plan” of Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland (ret.) and other military circles to seal off northern Gaza and kill or starve all the residents who have not left it. The IDF has denied that this plan is in implementation; the government has not—unless one counts its frequent apologist and spokesman, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“This plan is a war crime,” Etzion wrote. “If you are a soldier or an officer … it is your duty to refuse to take part in any action that constitutes a war crime. And if [you] do not serve, it is your duty to call on those who do to refuse to take part in a war crime.”
The lead editorial of the Israeli daily paper Haaretz on Oct. 22, asked the question in its headline: “Is Israel Really Implementing a Plan of Siege and Starvation in Gaza?” The editors wrote that “residents of Jabalya, senior defense officials, and the international community all suspect that Israel has effectively begun implementing Eiland’s criminal plan.
“Make no mistake, Eiland’s plan is a war crime, and it runs contrary to UN Security Council decision 2334, which states that land may not be taken through force, referring to acts of war. It calls for Israel to evacuate all the residents of northern Gaza to humanitarian zones farther south. Anyone who nevertheless chooses to stay would be considered a Hamas operative and could be killed…. Residents who chose to stay would be starved.
“In Israel, where the concepts of population transfer, the denial of humanitarian aid, expulsion, occupation and mass killing have been normalized, there are many takers for these war crimes packaged as a ‘plan.”
