OCCUPIED AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – A leading Israeli newspaper, citing unnamed soldiers serving in Gaza, described indiscriminate killings of Palestinian civilians in the territory’s Netzarim Corridor.
Haaretz, that has faced severe criticism from the extremist Israeli regime, quoted soldiers, career officers and reservists who said commanders were given unprecedented authority to operate in the Gaza Strip.
They alleged commanders had ordered or allowed the killing of unarmed women, children and men in the Netzarim Corridor, a seven-kilometer-wide strip of land that cuts across Gaza to the Mediterranean, and which has been turned into a military zone.
The report quoted an officer who recalled an incident in which a commander had announced that 200 militants were killed, when actually “only 10 were confirmed as known Hamas operatives”.
Soldiers meanwhile told Haaretz they received questionable orders to open fire on “anyone who enters” Netzarim.
The soldiers also described how division commanders received “expanded powers” allowing them to bomb buildings or launch airstrikes that previously required approval from the army’s top echelons.
Many soldiers who spoke to Haaretz pointed to a specific commander, Brigadier General Yehuda Vach, who last summer took charge of Division 252, which has been based in Netzarim.
One of the soldiers said of Vach -- who was born in the settlement of Kiryat Arba in the occupied West Bank -- that “his worldview and political positions were clearly driving his operational decisions”.
Another soldier said Vach had declared “there are no innocents in Gaza”.
The Haaretz report said Zionist soldiers spoke to the newspaper so that the “people need to know how this war really looks like, and what serious acts some commanders and fighters are committing inside Gaza”.

“They need to know the inhuman scenes we’re witnessing”.
Hamas reacted to the Haaretz report, saying the testimonies offered “new evidence of unprecedented war crimes and full-fledged ethnic cleansing operations, carried out in an organized manner”.
Hamas demanded that the United Nations and the International Court of Justice “document these testimonies and take the necessary steps to stop the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip”.
On Friday, an Israeli drone targeted the Kamal Adwan hospital, in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia. The Palestinian Information Centre also reported that Israeli artillery struck the hospital’s gate. 
A couple and their two daughters were killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza on Friday morning, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
Several others were also reported to have been injured in the attack. Local sources also reported that Israeli forces carried out demolition operations targeting residential buildings in Beit Lahiya.
At least 45,206 Palestinians have been martyred and 107,512 injured in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement.
It added that 77 people were martyred and 174 injured in the past 24 hours of Israeli attacks. 
Israeli airstrikes slammed into two schools sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City on Thursday, a Health Ministry official said, killing at least 17 people including five children in one of the schools. Rescue workers said at 30 people were also wounded across both locations.