On Saturday, a former Israeli Defense Minister, Moshe Yaalon, claimed that the Israeli army was carrying out “ethnic cleansing” in the Gaza Strip, causing an outcry within the political class.
“The road we are being led on is conquest, annexation and ethnic cleansing,” Mr. Yaalon said in an interview with the private channel Democrat TV.
Restarted by the journalist who asked him if he thought that Israel was heading towards “ethnic cleansing”, Mr. Yaalon replied: “What is happening there? There is no more Beit Lahia, no more Beit Hanoun, the army intervenes in Jabalia and in reality we are driving out the Arabs,” in reference to several towns in the Gaza Strip bombed by the Israeli army.
Reactions abounded, with the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, describing it as a “shame” that Israel had “such a character as head of the army and minister of Defense”.
Likud, the party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, reacted in a statement castigating Mr. Yaalon “whose (…) lying comments are a gift to the ICC and to the camp of Israel’s enemies.”
On November 21, the International Criminal Court (ICC) notably issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Moshe Ya’alon, 74, was the head of the Israeli army between 2002 and 2005, just before Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Mr Yaalon served as defense minister and deputy prime minister before resigning in 2016, following differences with then-prime minister Netanyahu.
Considered a hawk during his political career within Likud, he allied himself in 2019 with current opposition leader Yaïr Lapid before retiring from political life in 2021.
Customary with shock phrases, he had recently supported the soldiers who had threatened not to report to the army as reservists, saying that if he “had been an officer in Hitler’s army”, he would have refused to do certain things, while adding that he “did not compare” then Germany with the current situation in Israel.
The war in Gaza was triggered on October 7, 2023 by a surprise attack by Hamas which led to the death of 1,207 people on the Israeli side, the majority of them civilians killed that day, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures and including hostages dead or killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip.
The military campaign of retaliation launched by Israel has killed 44,382 people in the Gaza Strip, the majority civilians, according to data from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry for Gaza, deemed reliable by the UN.
