IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi stressed the army’s rules of engagement to troops of the 99th Division in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, two days after soldiers mistakenly shot to death three hostages in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood.
“You see two people, they are with hands up and without shirts — take two seconds. And I want to tell you something just as important. What if it’s two Gazans with a white flag coming out to surrender — why would we shoot at them? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. That’s not the IDF,” he told the soldiers, referring to Friday’s tragic incident, in which all three hostages were shirtless — signaling they were not wearing explosive belts — and one was waving a white flag.
Halevi told the soldiers that he was not speaking “to say whether [the soldiers who mistakenly opened fire on the captives] were right or wrong, but so that we will be right going forward.”
The three hostages, Yotam Haim, Samar Talalka, and Alon Lulu Shamriz, were kidnapped by Hamas during the terror group’s onslaught on southern Israel on October 7. They apparently managed to escape Hamas captivity before they were mistakenly shot dead by troops on Friday morning.
The IDF published photos on Sunday showing signs apparently left behind by the three hostages, which read “SOS” and “Help, 3 hostages.” The signs were written on fabric using leftover food.
The building with the signs, located a few hundred meters away from Friday’s incident, was discovered by troops on Wednesday, but initially dismissed as potentially boobytrapped by Hamas, as the terror group has attempted to lure soldiers into traps in the area in recent days.
The IDF has said that according to an initial investigation, the three hostages had been in that building for some of the time after they escaped Hamas captivity or were abandoned by their captors. IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the military was investigating another building the three hostages may have stayed in.
A soldier opened fire toward the trio upon spotting them, killing two and wounding the third, who fled into a nearby building. He then called out, “Help,” in Hebrew, and a commander ordered troops to stop shooting. But when the hostage exited the building, a soldier in a nearby building shot him dead.
Immediately following the incident, the IDF sent new protocols to ground troops for the possibility of more hostages managing to flee captivity.
Halevi told troops in Gaza that “hopefully, we will have another opportunity where captives will come to us or we will reach a house, and do the right thing.”
Stressing that the incident was “very difficult and painful,” Halevi reminded the soldiers of the three aims of the IDF war on Hamas in Gaza, which erupted after some 3,000 terrorists burst through the border to Israel, killing around 1,200 people and seizing 240 hostages — mainly civilians.
“Think about it, why did we start the ground operation?” he asked. “We set three goals: to dismantle Hamas, to restore security to the residents of the communities near the Gaza Strip… and the third task is the return of the hostages.”
Halevi also noted that the IDF had detained over 1,000 Hamas operatives during its operation in Gaza. “We get a lot of intelligence from the captives we have,” he said. “We don’t shoot them because the IDF doesn’t shoot a person who raises their hands. That’s strength, not weakness.”
He ended his speech by urging the soldiers: “We always feel that fighting is with the hands, fighting is with the feet. I tell you, gentlemen, don’t stop thinking for a second in combat.”
The IDF has carried out an initial probe into the tragic incident, finding that the soldier who opened fire upon misidentifying the three men as terrorists did so against protocols, as did the soldier who killed the third man, according to a senior officer in the Southern Command.
Still, the IDF understood that it was the conditions in the field led the soldiers to act in that way — the senior officer said the military has not identified any Palestinian civilians in Shejaiya in recent days. The scenario itself, of hostages walking around in a battle zone, had not been taken into account by the IDF.
Shejaiya in northern Gaza has long been seen as a key Hamas stronghold, home to some of its most elite forces and heaviest fortifications. The area where the hostages were killed was close to the scene of a deadly battle on Wednesday where nine soldiers, including two senior commanders, were killed.
The military believes Hamas’s Shejaiya battalion’s command and control is largely disrupted, and the terror group is operating in the area in a less organized manner, with smaller squads.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.