IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir ignored warnings by Military Advocate General Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi last week that issuing evacuation notices to residents of Gaza City could not be deemed legal until the necessary humanitarian conditions were in place for the population to be relocated, the Haaretz daily reported Wednesday.
The report, which the IDF dismissed as “false,” came the day after the IDF issued its first widespread evacuation order for Gaza City on Tuesday, saying all Palestinian civilians must leave the entire city immediately, ahead of a major military ground offensive against Hamas.
Israel has declared Gaza City, in the north of the territory, a combat zone amid plans for the military to take it over in a campaign to push Hamas into submission. Some one million people were thought to be residing in the city, or roughly half of Gaza’s total population.
In the evacuation orders, the IDF instructed Palestinian civilians to head to the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone — a sprawling camp city in the south of the Strip.
However, according to the Haaretz report, military leaders presented an “unrealistic picture” to Tomer-Yerushalmi of conditions in southern Gaza where Gaza City’s residents will need to move to, and presented plans to move people to already overcrowded regions of the war-torn territory.
Citing an unnamed security official, the report stated that maps presented by the IDF envisioned newly displaced people moving to areas of the humanitarian zone that were already considered full, leaving each person with just seven square meters of space.
Furthermore, the report alleged that the IDF informed the advocate general that it would allow the entry of 100,000 tents into the Gaza Strip ahead of the winter months, but in reality, it was only planning to supply tarpaulins, rather than fully enclosed tents.
The IDF also overestimated the ability of hospitals and the healthcare system in southern Gaza to deal with additional casualties, Haaretz stated, leading to concerns that moving such a large number of people to an area without adequate medical services could create a humanitarian disaster.
The military advocate general reportedly contacted Zamir on Thursday last week to tell him it was not possible to declare that proper preparations were in place for the evacuation of Gaza City, and that the IDF Intelligence Directorate was concerned that the evacuation would violate the laws of war due to the dire humanitarian conditions in the south.
She said, therefore, that dropping the evacuation warning notices should be postponed, but Zamir decided to go ahead regardless.
The IDF estimated on Thursday that some 200,000 have now left the city ahead of the IDF’s impending operation there, and following warnings issued via pamphlet drops of the upcoming attack.
Israel has a legal obligation under the laws of armed conflict to facilitate the provision of aid to at least parts of the civilian population, and not to create a situation of dire humanitarian conditions.
In a statement issued later on Thursday, the military said that the Haaretz report was “false,” and the claims it made were “baseless.”
“Following the erroneous reports that were published, it should be clarified that the claim that the chief of staff ordered the evacuation of Gaza City contrary to the legal opinion given to him is false,” the IDF said, adding that it “acts and will continue to act in accordance with the law.”
“Any other claim is baseless,” it added.
The military said that Tomer-Yerushalmi was “fully involved in the IDF’s assessments regarding the Gaza Strip, including the issue of moving the population for its protection, and presented to the relevant officials the legal conditions required for this.”
The evacuation warnings were only distributed after officials from the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories “confirmed that these [legal] conditions were met,” the army added.