Excerpts w/emphasis added:
“Since we already encircled the northern part of Gaza in the past nine or 10 months, what we should do is the following thing to tell all the 300,000 residents [that the UN estimates is 400,000] who still live in the northern part of Gaza that they have to leave this area and they should be given 10 days to leave through safe corridors that Israel will provide.
“And after that time, all this area will become to be a military zone. And all the Hamas people will still, though, whether some of them are fighters, some of them are civilians… will have two choices either to surrender or to starve.”
Eiland wants Israel to seal the areas once the evacuation corridors are closed. Anyone left behind would be treated as an enemy combatant. The area would be under siege, with the army blocking all supplies of food, water or other necessities of life from going in.
…
It is not clear whether the IDF has adopted the Generals’ Plan in part or in full, but the circumstantial evidence of what is being done in Gaza suggests it is at the very least a strong influence on the tactics being used against the population. The BBC submitted a list of questions to the IDF, which were not answered.
The ultra-nationalist extremists in Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet want to replace Palestinians in northern Gaza with Jewish settlers. Among many statements he’s made on the subject, the finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has said “Our heroic fighters and soldiers are destroying the evil of Hamas, and we will occupy the Gaza Strip… to tell the truth, where there is no settlement, there is no security.”
Better summary: The IDF is making efforts to get civilian out of a combat area. Hamas is trying to keep them there as human shields.
The ominous sounding “General’s Plan” is to cut an enemy force from supplies. Which is a valid and legal military strategy, and one that’s used in basically every war. Note the key part of the plan to move civilians from the area so it’s only enemy forces that are cut off from supply.
And we really don’t know if that strategy is even being employed. Israel nearly always warns civilians to leave areas where there are significant combat operations planned. Why would this particular warning indicate anything beyond that? There’s a lot of civilians there, and there’s Hamas there. All we know is that the IDF wants to attack Hamas in some way without there being civilians in the area.
So it’s just a rumour the BBC is spreading in this article in an effort to appear “balanced”. If they simply reported the facts that the IDF is trying to get civilians out of a combat area, it might sound like they’re saying that the IDF is doing something good. Can’t have that! Gotta put something in there for the ghouls that are still upset that the Gaza famine they were hoping for didn’t actually happen.
Really it may not even be feasible to cut the enemy off from supply in an urban combat scenario. We really don’t know how much food Hamas have stockpiled (while also pushing claims that Israel was trying to starve Palestinians). But it’s understandable that a military might try to think of ways to accomplish this given the whole “cut the enemy off from supplies” is basically the default strategy in any military operation.
This guy is calling international war crimes as “a valid and legal military strategy”.
“The starvation and mass killing of civilians in the Warsaw Ghetto is a legitimate strategy” - This guy.
“We need to put the Jews in gas chambers to differentiate between civilians and combatants.”
This guy.
What do you think is going on whenever Ukraine hits the Kerch Birdge? They’re trying to cut Russia off from supply. Do you think this is a war crime? Or do you define war crime as “everything Israel does”?
Spoiler alert. It isn’t. You have no idea what you’re talking about. They aren’t interdicting military supply convoys or shelling artillery depots. You absolutely cannot cut food off from civilians. It doesn’t matter if they don’t want to move. You have to let the food go through.
Yes we do. USAID let the cat out of the bag.
I understand you dearly want Israel to be a lawful liberal democracy. But it just isn’t.
In Article 49, the Fourth Geneva Convention, adopted on 12 August 1949, specifically forbade forced displacement: Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.
(Short excerpt of the long section clarifying that it’s a war crime)
They are moving civilians out of the area. You seemingly are missing that part. So no, they are not cutting off food from civilians.
Yeah that’s not for USAID to decide, and any report where an agency is overstepping it’s purview is suspect. If they’re pushing for a policy change beyond the scope of their department, then they can’t really be trusted to not fudge things to try to influence things further. They’re behaving unprofessionally to gain power they aren’t supposed to have and you can’t trust them to behave professionally when gathering information.