Israeli troops are authorized to “open fire on Palestinians virtually at will, including civilians,” and have turned Gaza into a “landscape littered with corpses,” +972 Mag reported on 8 July.
Journalists from the Tel Aviv-based news magazine interviewed six Israeli soldiers who have participated in the Gaza invasion and occupation in recent months.
The sources, including five who wished to remain anonymous, recounted how Israeli soldiers “routinely executed Palestinian civilians” simply because they entered areas designated as “no-go zones.”
“There was total freedom of action,” said B, a soldier who operated in Gaza. “If there is [even] a feeling of threat, there is no need to explain – you just shoot.”
When soldiers see someone approaching, “it is permissible to shoot at their center of mass [their body], not into the air,” B continued. “It’s permissible to shoot everyone, a young girl, an old woman.”
B went on to describe an incident in November when soldiers killed 15 to 20 Palestinians, including children, who evacuated the wrong way when a gunfight broke out near a school.
“Everyone who went to the right was killed … There was a pile of bodies,” he told +972.
Another soldier, S., stated that a fellow soldier shot and killed a Palestinian family just for walking around near the soldiers’ protected compound.
“At first, they say ‘four people.’ It turns into two children plus two adults, and by the end, it’s a man, a woman, and two children. You can assemble the picture yourself.”
A., an officer who served in the army’s Operations Directorate, explained that he was supposed to get authorization before shooting at “hospitals, clinics, schools, religious institutions, [and] buildings of international organizations.”
But in practice, “I can count on one hand the cases where we were told not to shoot. Even with sensitive things like schools, [approval] feels like only a formality.”
Hellbound and Down 