Dozens of Israeli reserve soldiers announced their refusal to return to military service in the Gaza Strip, and signed the first refusal to serve letter since the outbreak of war on October 7, according to Israeli media on Tuesday.
With American support, the war on Gaza left about 124,000 Palestinians dead and wounded – most of them children and women – and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that claimed the lives of dozens of children.
The Israeli newspaper “Haaretz” revealed today that 42 reserve soldiers who served in the Israeli occupation army during the current war signed at the end of last May the first letter refusing to serve since the outbreak of the war.
10 of them signed the letter with their full names and the others with their initials, and said in it, “The six months in which we participated in the war effort proved to us that military action alone will not return the kidnapped (Israeli prisoners).”
Tel Aviv estimates that there are 120 Israeli prisoners in Gaza, while the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) announced that more than 70 of them were killed in random raids launched by Israel, which holds about 9,500 Palestinians in its prisons.
The soldiers added, “We will not return to military service in Gaza even if we pay the price for our position.”
Rafah and the lives of prisoners
The soldiers expressed their rejection of the ongoing ground attack on the city of Rafah (south) of Gaza since May 6, on the second day of which Israel took control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah land crossing with Egypt.
They said, “This invasion – in addition to endangering our lives and the lives of innocent people in Rafah – will not return the kidnapped people alive, either Rafah or the kidnapped ones, and we choose the kidnapped ones.”
The soldiers continued in their letter, “Therefore, after the decision to enter Rafah at the expense of a deal with kidnappers, we – male and female reserve soldiers – declare that our conscience does not allow us to ignore the lives of the kidnapped people and spoil another deal.”
The Palestinian factions, as well as the Israeli opposition parties, accuse Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of obstructing a ceasefire agreement and a prisoner exchange after months of indirect negotiations mediated by Egypt and Qatar and with the participation of the United States.
Last May, Hamas and the rest of the factions agreed to a proposed Egyptian-Qatari agreement, but Netanyahu rejected it, claiming that it did not meet Israel’s conditions.
Lebanon and Gaza
According to the newspaper, 16 of the signatories of the letter serve in the Intelligence Corps, 7 serve in the Home Front Command, the rest are in the infantry, combat engineering and armored units, while two serve in the elite units (special forces).
It quoted one of them – Tal Vardi (28 years old), a civic education teacher – as saying that if he was called to serve in the north (i.e. Lebanon), he would join the army, but he would not fight again in Gaza.
In “solidarity with Gaza”, Lebanese and Palestinian factions in Lebanon – most notably Hezbollah – have been exchanging daily bombings with the Israeli army across the “Blue Line” separating the “Blue Line”, most of them on the Lebanese side, most of them on the Lebanese side.
Israel has also occupied Lebanese lands in the south for decades.
According to the newspaper, “Vardi broke down when Israel entered Rafah instead of signing a prisoner exchange deal.”
“As soon as the operation in Rafah began, I felt that it went beyond what I could feel was morally right, and could not be justified,” Vardi said.
Israel continues its war on Gaza, ignoring the UN Security Council resolutions to stop it immediately, and the orders of the International Court of Justice to end the Rafah invasion, take measures to prevent acts of genocide, and improve the dire humanitarian situation in the Strip.
Tel Aviv is also challenging the request of International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant for their responsibility for “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” in Gaza.
Burning houses
As for Yuval Green, a 26-year-old paratrooper, he said that even before October 7, he was thinking about whether he would continue to serve in the reserves, because he opposes the occupation and Israel’s policy in the West Bank.
But on October 8, Green put aside his moral doubts and enlisted in the reserves, according to the newspaper.
At the beginning of the war, the army announced the summoning of 360,000 reserve soldiers to participate in the fighting.
Green said that the army crossed a red line when the company commander ordered the crew to burn a Palestinian house they were in when it was time for them to leave, and the team had burned houses before.
He continued, “I spoke to the company commander, and tried to understand the reason: Is it the house of a Hamas activist?” The company commander replied, “The house must be burned so that no military equipment is left in it and the army’s fighting methods are exposed,” but Green was not convinced.
Random shooting
Michael Ofer Ziv (29 years old) told the newspaper that he felt confused when he was at a military headquarters and saw Israeli warplanes bombing Gaza.
He added, “It is very difficult to determine what is justified and what is unjustified (…). In war, 30,000 people are not killed (directly), but most of them are buried under the rubble when they are bombed from the air. What happens is random shooting.”
According to the newspaper, he realized how many civilians could be killed by every bomb he saw.
He stressed that the army would do anything to achieve its goals, including “dismantling Hamas and returning the kidnapped people.”
For the 18th year, Israel has besieged the Gaza Strip, and its war forced about two million of its population of about 2.2 million Palestinians to flee in catastrophic conditions, with severe scarcity of food, water, and medicine.