JERUSALEM — Israel’s military on Thursday ordered a criminal inquiry into its own soldiers’ reports that some troops killed Palestinian civilians, including children, during the Gaza war by hastily opening fire, confident that relaxed rules of engagement would protect them.
Their accounts, published in a military institute’s newsletter, echo Palestinian allegations and feed into human-rights groups’ contention that Israel violated the laws of war during the three-week conflict that ended in mid-January. Soldiers also reported the wanton destruction of civilian property.
The troops spoke at a get-together with students enrolled in a military preparatory course. The transcript of the session appeared this week in a newsletter the institute publishes, Israeli newspapers reported.
Speaking to Israel Radio, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that Israel “has the most ethical army in the world” and that reports of exceptions would be “checked carefully.”
In one published account reported by the Haaretz daily and the Maariv newspaper, an Israeli sniper killed a Palestinian woman and her two children after they misunderstood another soldier’s order and turned the wrong way. The sniper was not told the civilians had been released from the house where they were confined and, in compliance with standing orders, opened fire when they approached him.
“The climate in general, from what I understood from most of my men whom I talked to, was . . . the lives of Palestinians, let’s say, are far less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they’re concerned, they can justify it that way,” an infantry squad leader was quoted as saying.
