WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime military’s former chief of staff has accused his successor of “sending soldiers to commit war crimes” in Gaza and torn into the occupying regime for “losing touch with Jewish morality”.
In an interview with Israeli outlet Ynet, Moshe Yaalon, who also served as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war minister between 2013 and 2016, said the Zionist regime had abandoned the captives held by Hamas and was carrying out a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza. 
Yaalon attacked the current military chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, saying he was not stopping “clearly illegal orders” and was ordering “his soldiers to be war criminals”.
“Call it ethnic cleansing, call it transfer, call it deportation - it’s a war crime,” Yaalon said, describing plans led by far-right Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir to occupy the entire Gaza Strip and evacuate its Palestinian population.
“Smotrich and Ben Gvir do not want to replace Hamas; they want Israeli military rule and Israeli civilian administration. Let them say it very clearly: they are going to occupy Gaza and settle it with Jews after it has been ethnically cleansed. Let them say it,” said Yaalon, who fought in the 1973 Middle East war and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
On Monday, Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, said: “We are finally going to occupy the Gaza Strip.” 
The former chief of staff, who resigned from the Likud party and his post as Netanyahu’s war minister in 2016 before joining the centre-right Blue and White alliance, accused the prime minister of not taking responsibility for his own decisions and prolonging the war on Gaza to ensure his political survival. 
“You send the soldiers to commit war crimes, and then you say that the [military] will stay there forever… If the cabinet decided this, then you, Netanyahu, say that and don’t hide behind your chief of staff,” Yaalon told Ynet.
“The chief of staff is a commander within the army. Netanyahu hides behind him and then blames everyone else. He has not yet taken responsibility for October 7, which is first and foremost his responsibility,” the former chief of staff said.
“Everything here is about stalling for time and holding on to this war, because the end of the war is the end of the term,” Yaalon added, referring to Netanyahu’s time in office.