The Israeli army recognized the defects in its initial accounts of the involvement of its troops in the murder of 15 people last month in the south of Gaza, that the United Nations stated that they were all paramedics and rescues.
The admission came on Saturday, the day after a video obtained by the New York Times seemed to contradict a fundamental part of the previous version of the military events. While the military had said that it shot on vehicles after “they advanced suspiciously”, the video showed clearly marked ambulances and a fire truck.
The episode attracted international control and the sentence. After revealing the clear inconsistencies in the Israeli account, the military seemed to move more quickly than usual to face the problem. The internal military investigations on questionable mortal episodes can drag on for months, even years.
Here’s what we know so far:
The version of the Israeli army
In his initial statements after the bodies were discovered, the military insisted that his troops had opened fire while a convoy approached them in the dark “without headlights or emergency signs”.
But the video – discovered on the cell phone of a paramedian that was found in a mass tomb – shows that the ambulances and the fire truck had the emergency lights while the Israeli forces triggered their burst.
The army now says that the initial account of the forces on the ground has been “wrong”.
Military officials had previously stated that nine of those killed were agents of Hamas or Islamic jihad. They had appointed only one of nine and had not provided tests for their request.
Saturday, a military official who informed journalists about the initial results of an internal investigation said that at least six of the 15 were Hamas agents but has not yet provided evidence. The official spoke on condition of anonymity according to the rules of the army.
Before the meeting with the emergency vehicles, the official said, the reserve forces of a infantry brigade had found themselves lurking along a road north of the city of Gazan in Rafah before dawn on March 23. At 4 in the morning, they killed what the official described as two members of Hamas’ security staff and held a third.
Two hours later, while Dawn was breaking, the emergency convoy approached the same point. When the rescuers began to leave their vehicles, said the official, the Israeli forces believed they were the agents of Hamas who headed towards them and opened the fire from afar.
Amos Harel, a military business analyst for the left newspaper Haaretz, said in an interview that the soldiers had “good reasons to be anxious” and that it would be wrong immediately to suppose that the case was one of “cold blood murder”, citing the frequent use of Fighters of Hamas Fighters of a cover.
But the episode raises questions, said Harel, on the conduct of the soldiers and on the version of the events they reported from the ground.
The military official denied the news that some bodies were found linked and fired at close range. He said the troops had buried the bodies to protect them from wild animals and used heavy equipment to move disabled vehicles from the street, making them.
What help groups say
The representatives of Palestine Red Crescent Society declared last week that ambulances had left around 3:30 on March 23 to evacuate Palestinian civilians wounded by Israeli bombings.
The Crescent Red said that an ambulance and its crew had been affected by the Israeli forces and that many other ambulances and a fire truck went to the scene in the next few hours to save them. A United Nations vehicle was also sent, the United Nations said.
Seventeen people were sent in total, of whom 10 were red crescent workers, six were the rescuers of the Civil Defense Service of Gaza and one was a United Nations worker.
It took days to negotiate access to recover the 15 bodies. Crescent Red said that a doctor was still missing and that one, Munther Abed, had been held by the Israeli forces and subsequently released.
The Crescent Red said that the “targeting” of Israel of its doctors should be “considered a war crime” and requested an investigation. He added that the latest killings brought to 27 the number of his members killed during the war, which began on October 7, 2023, with a fatal Hamas attack.
Friday, the president of Palestine Red Crescent Society, dr. Youunis Al-Khatib, he told journalists that, on the basis of autopsies and forensic tests, emergency operators had been “targeted by a very close range”.
Reaction in Israel so far
The case received a wider coverage in Israel from the video exposure. The politicians remained mostly silent, perhaps waiting for the military to complete his investigation.
Harel, military business analyst, said that the investigation was a first test for the chief of the military staff recently installed, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, as regards the international army position.
And the broadest question of responsibility remains. Yesh Din, an Israeli organization for human rights, discovered last year that 573 cases of suspected war crimes in Gaza examined in the last ten years from the army, only one has led to the judicial procedure.
Gabby Sobelman Reports contributed by Rehovot, Israel.