Israel’s military has admitted to several “professional failures” and a breach of orders in the killing of 15 rescue workers in Gaza last month, and said that it was dismissing a deputy commander responsible.
The deadly shooting of eight Red Crescent paramedics, six civil defence workers and a UN staffer by Israeli troops, as they carried out a rescue mission in southern Gaza at dawn on 23 March, had prompted international outcry and calls for a war crimes investigation.
Their bodies were uncovered days after the shooting, buried in a sandy mass grave alongside their crushed vehicles. The UN said they had been killed “one by one”. Israel at first claimed that the medics’ vehicles did not have emergency signals on when troops opened fire but later backtracked after phone video recovered from one of the medics contradicted the account.
On Sunday, the military said an investigation had “identified several professional failures, breaches of orders, and a failure to fully report the incident”.
As a result, the deputy commander of the IDF’s Golani Brigade “will be dismissed from his position due to his responsibilities as the field commander … and for providing an incomplete and inaccurate report during the debrief”.
Another commander, whose unit was in operation in the southern city of Rafah, where the killings took place, would be censured for “his overall responsibility for the incident”, the military said.
Despite admitting mistakes, the report does not recommend any criminal action to be taken against the military units responsible for the incident and found no violation of the IDF’s code of ethics. The findings of the report will now be passed along to the military advocate general. Israel’s extreme-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, called the army chief’s decision to dismiss the responsible deputy commander “a grave mistake”.
Human rights lawyers called the inquiry into question, pointing out that it had been done by Israel’s military itself and alleging it lacked independence.
Sawsan Zaher, a Palestinian human rights lawyer based in Israel, said: “There is nothing objective or neutral about this inquiry. The severity of this case should have led to an immediate criminal investigation. Instead we see the Israeli military inquiring into itself and yet again evidence of violations of international law and war crimes are swept under the carpet.”
The report maintains, without providing further evidence, that six of the 15 Palestinians killed were Hamas militants. Previous claims by Israel along the same lines have been denied by the Red Crescent.
The investigation provided the most thorough account from Israel’s forces about what they alleged took place that night. According to the report, it was an “operational misunderstanding” by Israeli forces that led them to fire on the ambulances. They denied that there had been any “indiscriminate fire” and claimed troops were simply alert to “real threats” from Hamas on the ground, accusing the militant group of regularly using ambulances to transport weapons and terrorists.
The investigation claimed that “poor night visibility” was to blame for the deputy battalion commander’s conclusion that the ambulances belonged to Hamas militants and the decision to fire on them. Video footage that emerged from the scene showed that the ambulances were clearly moving with flashing emergency lights.
The investigation also found that the shooting of a UN vehicle, which drove past 15 minutes later, was carried out in violation of orders.
Daniel Machover, a human rights lawyer who co-founded Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, said the admission of the circumstances of the killing of the UN worker, who was in a clearly marked UN vehicle, “alone should be grounds for a court martial and a war crimes investigation, not simply a dismissal”.
After uncovering the bodies from a sandy grave in Gaza days after the attack, a UN official said the workers had been killed “one by one”, while the head of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has said the men were “targeted at close range”.
Some witnesses and relatives have also alleged there was evidence that at least one of the victims had had their hands bound.
The military’s report said there was “no evidence to support claims of execution or that any of the deceased were bound before or after the shooting”. Ahmed Dhair, the forensic pathologist in Gaza who carried out the postmortems on the victims, said last week that he had not seen visible signs of restraint.
The Israeli military also defended the decision by soldiers to “evacuate” the bodies the next morning and claimed that while the decision to crush their vehicles was wrong, “there was no attempt to hide the incident”.
Dhair told the Guardian last week that the postmortems showed the victims were mostly killed by gunshots to the head and torso, as well as injuries caused by explosives. Dhair alleged evidence of “explosive bullets” in the bodies he had examined. A Red Crescent spokesperson said the group would publish a statement in response to the findings by Monday. Last week, it said that one of the two Palestinian paramedics who had survived the shooting, Assad al-Nsasrah, remained in Israeli detention.
The Israeli statement on the findings concluded by saying that Israel’s military “regrets the harm caused to uninvolved civilians”. Asked if he thought the incident represented a pervasive issue within the Israeli military, Maj Gen Yoav Har-Even, who headed the inquiry, told journalists: “We’re saying it was a mistake, we don’t think it’s a daily mistake.”
Palestinians and international human rights groups have repeatedly accused Israel’s military of failing to properly investigate or whitewashing misconduct by its troops. A recent report by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organisation, concluded that Israel “did not take appropriate action to investigate suspected violations of international law that occurred as part of its war in Gaza”.
Ziv Stahl, the executive director of Yesh Din, said: “It’s another example of the almost full impunity given to soldiers for events in Gaza. In this case, I think they were quick to handle it because of the international pressure they are facing. By taking this small disciplinary action against one commander, it undermines any chance of a wider criminal investigation.”
The international criminal court, established by the international community as a court of last resort, has accused the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the former defence minister Yoav Gallant of war crimes. Israel, which is not a member of the court, has long asserted that its legal system is capable of investigating the army, and Netanyahu has accused the ICC of antisemitism.
