“The Israeli military is conducting an ethnic cleansing operation in the northern Gaza Strip,” Haaretz declared in an unsigned editorial yesterday. “The few Palestinians remaining in the area are being forcibly evacuated, homes and infrastructure have been destroyed, and wide roads in the area are being built and completing the separation of the communities in the northern Strip from the center of Gaza City.”
The editorial reports that IDF commanders in Gaza claim not to know what “the Generals’ Plan” of Giora Eiland is and say they are only carrying out orders. “It’s important to call things by their name: Eiland may have sold these ideas to the public, but the ‘cleansing of the space’ in northern Gaza is carried out by the IDF under the direction of its commanders, starting with Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi and Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, who are subordinate to the directives of the political leadership: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the recently fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and his successor, Israel Katz,” Haaretz says.
