Former Israeli defense minister accuses his country of carrying out ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza

 A highly decorated former Israeli defense minister has caused a stir by accusing his country of carrying out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in northern Gaza.

Moshe Ya’alon — who served for three decades in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), including in the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit, and as chief of the military general staff — also said he believed Israel was losing its identity as a liberal democracy and turning into a “corrupt, leprous fascist messianic state.”

“Conquest, annexation, ethnic cleansing — look at northern Gaza,” Ya’alon told Israel’s Democrat TV.

The interviewer was surprised by Ya’alon’s use of the phrase “ethnic cleansing,” and asked, “Is that what you think, that we are on the way to that?”

“Why ‘on the way’?” he replied. “What is happening there? There is no Beit Lahya. There is no Beit Hanoun. “They are currently operating in Jabalia and are essentially clearing the area of ​​Arabs,” he said, referring to the IDF.

Israeli military forces are two months into an intense and deadly operation in northern Gaza, targeting what it sees as a resurgence of Hamas militants. It has also told all civilians to head to a humanitarian zone in southern Gaza for their own safety. Thousands of Palestinian civilians have refused to leave, after more than a year of being told to evacuate to areas of Gaza that are also targeted by Israeli attacks. According to the World Food Programme, hardly any aid deliveries have been allowed in northern Gaza.

The Israeli military, in response to Ya’alon, denied that it was carrying out ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, saying it was acting “in accordance with international law, and evacuates civilians based on operational necessity, for their own protection.”

The government has yet to present a plan for post-war governance of Gaza. It has also denied that it is implementing a “surrender or starve” proposal in northern Gaza put forward by a retired military general, Giora Eiland, although it did consider the plan.

“I have been confronted with the statements of many ministers and members of the Knesset (parliament) in the government,” Ya’alon said in a second interview, with Channel 12. “Under this heading, ethnic cleansing is indeed being carried out; I have no other phrase for it.”

The interviewer said that phrase evoked “dark periods” in history.

“Yes, and I used this term on purpose to sound the alarm,” the former defense minister responded.

Extremist factions in Israeli politics have called for Jewish settlement in Gaza almost since the beginning of the war, following the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Soldiers serving in Gaza have regularly promoted the return of Gush Katif — Gaza settlements destroyed when Israel unilaterally withdrew from the territory in 2005. And the ideas have gained traction: in October, hundreds of activists and several sitting ministers attended a conference on Gush Katif near the Gaza border.

“We have to stay there, we have to establish a flourishing Jewish settlement,” Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in an interview with Israeli television’s Kan channel on Monday. “Both because it is the land of Israel and because it guarantees the security of the residents of the south.”

Ya’alon joined a growing group in recent weeks that refers to Israel’s military operation in northern Gaza as “ethnic cleansing.”

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The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an editorial in late October entitled: “If it looks like ethnic cleansing, it probably is.” Human Rights Watch said last month in a 154-page report that Israel oversaw the mass forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza in a deliberate and systematic campaign that amounts to a war crime and a crime against humanity. Josep Borrell, the head of EU diplomacy, said he believes it is “no coincidence that the words ‘ethnic cleansing’ are increasingly used to describe what is happening in northern Gaza.”

Last month, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, saying it had “reasonable grounds” to believe that Netanyahu bears criminal responsibility for war crimes such as “starvation as a method of warfare” and “the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.” It also issued an arrest warrant for a senior Hamas official.

Ya’alon said that seeing what is happening in Gaza, he could no longer use the oft-quoted IDF appellation as the “most moral” army in the world.

“The IDF is not the most moral army today,” he said. “I find it difficult to say that.”

His words drew harsh criticism from former military colleagues. “Lying and harming the State of Israel and the IDF is not following a compass – this is lawlessness,” politician Benny Gantz, who also served as IDF chief of staff, said in a statement. “The IDF has done everything possible to minimize the loss of civilian life,” said Naftali Bennett, who also served in the Sayeret Matkal commando unit. “The population is moved away from danger for their own safety. It is not only the IDF’s right to do so, it is its obligation.”

Ya’alon said that while military commanders may believe their actions are purely operational, politicians have other plans in mind, and his words were directed at them.

“I am talking about soldiers who move populations and believe it is for operational purposes,” Ya’alon said. “But the intention of Smotrich, Ben Gvir, Strook and Daniela Weiss” – all of them declared settlers – “is open and declared.”

Andrea Buenaventura and Carol Tenorio contributed to this article.