The Israeli military deployed its so-called Hannibal directive, which allows the army to use all necessary force to prevent the capture of soldiers, during Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, resulting in the loss of civilian and military lives, according to an investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Here’s what we know so far:
What is the Hannibal Directive and how was it developed?
For nearly two decades, the military censor kept this directive, also known as the Hannibal Procedure or Hannibal Protocol, secret. It allows the Israeli military to use whatever force is necessary to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers and their deportation to enemy territory, including actions that could result in the death of these prisoners.
In 1986, Israeli army commanders developed this doctrine after three soldiers from the Givati Infantry Brigade were captured by the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
At the time, Israel occupied a region of southern Lebanon, invading the country in 1982. Hezbollah captured soldiers patrolling the area, which would remain under Israeli occupation until 2000.
In this incident, members of the brigade saw a vehicle fleeing with their comrades but did not open fire. This directive was given to ensure that this does not happen again.
The remains of the captured soldiers were returned to Israel in 1996 in exchange for the bodies of 123 Hezbollah fighters, according to the Israeli government.
Israel’s hardline stance since then is because kidnapping a soldier is a strategic move for an enemy, Yehuda Shaul, the founder of the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence, who served in the Israeli army from 2001 to 2004, told Tel Aviv Tribune last November. The prisoners give them bargaining power and the ability to influence national morale and public support for a conflict, he said. Moreover, an enemy cannot extract strategic information if the soldiers are killed before they are captured.
Throughout the current conflict, the fate of the prisoners taken by Hamas fighters to Gaza on October 7 continues to stir Israeli public opinion against the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. For the public, the return of the prisoners has become a defining aspect of the war. Their well-being has been named a priority in various polls conducted by Israeli institutions.
The same thing happened with previous prisoners. In 2006, Hamas captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. After five years in captivity, he was released in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, the largest number ever released by Israel in exchange for a soldier.
The origins of the directive’s name are controversial, with some sources claiming it is named after a Carthaginian general who chose to poison himself rather than fall captive to the Romans in 181 BC.
Israeli military officials, however, said a computer generated the name randomly.
In 2016, Israeli media, including the Times of Israel, reported that Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot had decided to “cancel” the Hannibal Protocol due to apparent confusion over the freedoms it granted.
The Times of Israel reported at the time: “The directive authorizes soldiers to use potentially massive force to prevent a soldier from falling into enemy hands. This includes possibly endangering the life of the soldier in question in order to prevent his capture.”
“Some officers, however, interpret this order to mean that the soldiers must deliberately kill their comrade in order to prevent his being taken prisoner, and not that they may accidentally injure or kill him in the attempt.”
What does the Haaretz investigation reveal?
Despite reports that the directive had been rescinded in 2016, the Haaretz investigation, published Sunday, found that Israeli commanders ordered its deployment without any warning or additional clarification during a chaotic response to the events of October 7, when Hamas fighters attacked army outposts and surrounding villages in southern Israel.
The attacks killed 1,139 people and 251 others were taken captive in Gaza.
In investigating the Israeli response to this surprise attack, Haaretz journalists examined military documents and collected testimonies from soldiers, mid-level and senior officers to reveal the orders and procedures established by the Gaza Division, the Southern Command and the Israeli General Staff that day, demonstrating not only widespread knowledge of the Hannibal Protocol but also its use at various points in the attack.
During the chaos, as Israeli army commanders struggled to gauge the scale of the Hamas attack, the directive was reportedly deployed to three military installations. However, the orders did not distinguish between captured soldiers and civilians.
According to Haaretz, at 7:18 a.m., in the early hours of the attack, a report of a kidnapping in Beit Hanoon, known to Israelis as Erez, a crossing between Israel and Gaza, the order given by the divisional headquarters was simply “Hannibal to Erez,” with no further explanation or clarification, suggesting that its meaning was already well known to everyone involved in the message.
A message sent to the Gaza Division about five hours after the attacks began ordered: “Not a single vehicle is allowed to return to Gaza.”
A source in Israel’s Southern Command, which is responsible for guarding parts of the borders with Egypt, Jordan and Gaza, later told Haaretz: “Everyone knew at that time that such vehicles could transport civilians or kidnapped soldiers… Everyone knew what it meant to not let any vehicles return to Gaza.”
A United Nations-backed report released last month estimated that more than a dozen civilians and soldiers were killed by Israeli fire that day. Haaretz, however, said it was impossible to determine the extent of Israeli casualties following the directive.
Has the Hannibal Directive been used on other occasions?
Until its supposed revocation in 2016, the Hannibal Directive was used or suspected of having been deployed several times.
- In October 2000, three Israeli soldiers were captured by Hezbollah in the occupied Shebaa Farms (Har Dov), on the border between the occupied Golan Heights, Lebanon and Syria. Upon discovering the soldiers’ capture, the Israeli Northern Command ordered a “Hannibal situation,” which led Israeli attack helicopters to fire on the convoy of vehicles that was believed to be carrying the captured soldiers.
- In 2006, after Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier, the Hannibal directive was invoked, but it was too late to be implemented. A month later, it was deployed again after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers. “If we had found them, we would have hit them, even if it meant killing the soldiers,” a senior Israeli official was later quoted as saying by the Washington Post.
- The directive was also reportedly activated during Israel’s 2008 war on Gaza, when a Palestinian’s home was bombed to prevent the capture of a wounded Israeli soldier inside.
- In 2014, the Hannibal Directive was implemented in Rafah after the kidnapping of a junior Israeli officer. After investigating the carnage that followed the soldier’s capture, Amnesty International concluded that the Hannibal Directive had been implemented, resulting in the deaths of 200 Palestinian civilians, including 75 children, in an attack that it described as a “war crime.” The Israeli military later denied that the directive had been implemented, although it acknowledged that it had been mentioned repeatedly in radio communications.
- The Hannibal directive was also reportedly used during the 2014 Battle of Shujayea in Gaza City, as well as in the Qalandiya refugee camp in 2016, when an Israeli soldier went missing in the camp, prompting the massive deployment of troops.
- According to Haaretz, citing a high-ranking military source, the Hannibal directive was deployed on October 7 and was not ordered by the division commander. The newspaper asked who gave the order, to which the source replied that “this may be established by post-war investigations.”
What does the Israeli government say about the Hannibal Directive?
In 2006, the Jerusalem Post described the directive as standard procedure in the event of an attempted kidnapping. “Soldiers are briefed, but never officially,” on the contents of the order, the newspaper reported.
The Israeli military has often denied the interpretation of the directive that authorizes the killing of fellow soldiers. However, confusion over the wording of the directive as well as the restriction of written versions of the protocol to senior officers has led to ambiguity over the value to be placed on individuals’ lives in cases of kidnapping.
In 2011, this led then-military chief Benny Gantz to openly state that the directive did not authorize the killing of Israeli soldiers to prevent a kidnapping.
What did the Israeli army say?
Discussions of the Hannibal Directive were widely reported to have been banned by Israeli military censorship until 2003, and the military has not officially commented on the directive’s use.
Contacted by Haaretz, an IDF spokesperson said the army “has begun conducting internal investigations into what happened on October 7 and the period before,” adding: “The purpose of these investigations is to learn and draw lessons that could be used to continue the battle. When these investigations are completed, the results will be presented to the public in a transparent manner.”
