Israel\u2019s former defence minister Moshe Yaalon on Saturday accused the Israeli army of ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, sparking an outcry in the country. \u201cThe road we are being led down is conquest, annexation and ethnic cleansing,\u201d Yaalon said in an interview on a private TV channel. Pressed on the ethnic cleansing appraisal, he continued: \u201cWhat is happening there? There is no more Beit Lahia, no more Beit Hanoun, the army intervenes in Jabalia and in reality the land is being cleared of Arabs.\u201d The north of the Gaza Strip, which includes the areas Yaalon mentioned, has been the target of an Israeli offensive aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping. Yaalon, 74, headed the Israeli army between 2002 and 2005, just before Israel\u2019s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. He served as defence minister and deputy premier before resigning in 2016 over disagreements with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. There was immediate anger in Israel at his comments. Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said it was a \u201cshame\u201d for Israel to \u201chave had such a figure as army chief and defence minister\u201d. Netanyahu\u2019s Likud party, to which Yaalon once belonged, slammed his \u201cempty and dishonest remarks\u201d, calling them \u201ca gift to the ICC and to the camp of Israel\u2019s enemies\u201d. The statement was a reference to the International Criminal Court, which has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and his ex-defence minister Yoav Gallant on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza. Earlier this month, a UN special committee pointed to \u201cmass civilian casualties and life-threatening conditions intentionally imposed on Palestinians\u201d. Israel\u2019s prosecution of the military operation in Gaza was \u201cconsistent with the characteristics of genocide\u201d, the committee said, in the first use of the word by the UN in the context of the Gaza crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israel\u2019s former defence minister Moshe Yaalon on Saturday accused the Israeli army of ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, sparking an outcry in the country….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21407,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}