Ya’aloun: Israel is Ethnic Cleansing Gaza

The Israeli former defense minister Moshe Ya’aloun told the Israeli radio that Israel is conducting an ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

Ya’alon said that “the army is committing war crimes” in the Gaza Strip and “is trying to hide them,” stressing that he bears responsibility for his previous statements regarding his country’s army committing “ethnic cleansing crimes” in the northern Gaza Strip.

This came in an interview conducted by the Israeli Public Radio on Sunday with Ya’alon, the day after he confirmed that the “army” was committing ethnic cleansing in the northern Gaza Strip.

Ya’alon said: “I bear responsibility for what I said about carrying out ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza.”

On Saturday, in an unprecedented statement by a former official of Ya’alon’s stature, in an interview with the local Israeli channel /democratv/, excerpts of which were republished by the official broadcasting authority, he said that “Israel” is carrying out “ethnic cleansing” in the northern Gaza Strip, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of leading the entity to “ruin.”

Ya’alon added in an interview today: “I speak on behalf of the leaders serving in northern Gaza, there are war crimes being committed there.”

He continued: “Israeli soldiers are putting their lives at risk and will be subject to lawsuits in the International Criminal Court.”

He continued: “I must warn about what is happening there (in northern Gaza) and they are trying to hide it from us, as they are committing war crimes there.”

Regarding Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s call to displace the residents of the Gaza Strip, Ya’alon said: “Smotrich is proud of the opportunity to reduce the population of Gaza by half.”

He went on to ask: “What do you call that? He has no moral problem with killing two million Gazans, we were a democratic country.”

Last November, Smotrich called for reoccupying the Gaza Strip and reducing the number of Palestinians there by half by encouraging what he called voluntary migration.

Regarding the policy of the right-wing Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Ya’alon said: “We are now being dragged into occupation, annexation, ethnic cleansing – look at the northern Gaza Strip – displacement, and Jewish settlement.”

Ya’alon, who served as Minister of Defense between 2013-2016, accused Benjamin Netanyahu in the same interview of leading “Israel towards ruin.”

The Israeli occupation army, supported by the United States and Europe, continues its aggression on the Gaza Strip for the second year, where its aircraft bomb the vicinity of hospitals, buildings, towers and homes of Palestinian civilians, destroying them over the heads of their inhabitants, and preventing the entry of water, food, medicine and fuel.

The aggression left about 149,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and elderly people, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world according to Jo24.

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Dr. Marwan Asmar holds a PhD from Leeds University and is a freelance writer specializing on the Middle East. He has worked as a journalist since the early 1990s in Jordan and the Gulf countries, and been widely published, including at Albawaba, Gulf News, Al Ghad, World Press Review and others.

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Israel Continues to Target Children – UN Report

Israel continues to commit genocide and other atrocity crimes by deliberately targeting Palestinian children, a UN report said on Tuesday.

“Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank,” read the report published by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.

The commission said it had concluded last year that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and found that the intense scale and systematic nature of the Israeli military operations have continued, causing unprecedented death, injury and trauma among Palestinian children.

“The deliberate targeting of children is one of the key elements establishing genocidal intent of the Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group, in whole or in part, in Gaza,” the commission said.

“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” said Srinivasan Muralidhar, chair of the commission.

“Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law,” he added.

“Palestinian children have been arrested and subjected to torture and other severe forms of mistreatment in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, with no information on their whereabouts,” the commission said.

“Israeli security forces have also used sexual violence against children as part of the collective shaming and oppression, entrenched within a prolonged, ethnic, gendered, and intergenerational pattern of Israeli occupation and hostilities,” it added.

The report said Israel’s targeting of neonatal and maternity care centers in Gaza directly harmed the survival of newborns and Palestinians’ reproductive future, including increases in miscarriages, birth defects and lasting vulnerabilities among newborns.

“Starvation imposed by Israel through blockade and siege have further caused the death of Palestinian children and severely impacted the health of many others, depriving them of essential nutrition and increasing disease risks amid reduced immunization, food insecurity and destroyed health services,” it also said.

“Even if the bombs and guns fall silent in Gaza and West Bank, Palestinian children will not simply recover overnight,” Muralidhar said. “The destruction of their health, education and development is irreversible.”

“The protection, care and survival of Palestinian children are inseparable from the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination,” Muralidhar said. “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future.”

The commission said it had identified Israeli military units responsible for killing and injuring Palestinian children and made recommendations to Israel and UN member states to ensure accountability.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, Israeli attacks have killed 1,021 Palestinians and injured 3,249 others since late 2025 in daily violations of the ceasefire in effect.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza since October 2023 has killed 73,032 people, injured over 173,300 and caused massive destruction to about 90% of the enclave’s infrastructure, with the United Nations estimating reconstruction costs at about $70 billion.

Since October 2023, West Bank cities and towns have seen near-daily Israeli raids, including arrests and home searches. The escalation by the Israeli army and occupiers has killed 1,173 Palestinians, wounded 12,666, led to the arrest of about 23,000 and displaced 33,000, according to official Palestinian figures. Anadolu

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