At a community meeting held at the Ein Habesor settlement this week, Halevi said that during the 17-month operation, “not once,” the legal counsel restricted military operations in Gaza. The retired general led the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) from the outbreak of the war on October 7, 2023 until he resigned in March this year, Anmeiden reported.
Halevi’s estimate, covering about 10% of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents, is consistent with casualty data from Gaza’s Ministry of Health, with 64,718 Palestinians being killed and 163,859 injured, while thousands have not been recorded under the tile rub. Despite Israel’s claims it is equivalent to “Hamas propaganda,” international humanitarian groups consider the province’s statistics to be widely reliable.
Israeli intelligence from the early days of the war in Gaza was leaked, suggesting that over 80% of those killed were civilians.
“This is not a mild war. We took off our gloves in the first minute,” Halevi told residents, arguing that the Israeli regime should have acted more forcefully in Gaza, even before the 7th October operation of Al-Aqsa Flood. He added that international law is “very important to Israel,” but military lawyers never curtailed operational decisions.
MNA