Israel’s Army Radio is reporting that a top military lawyer has sent a “strong” letter to Major-General Yaron Finkelman, who commands the country’s Southern Command, warning that his forces are not adequately assessing the size of the civilian population in areas they are attacking and operating in the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera reports.
Doron Kadosh, the journalist behind the Army Radio report, said the letter by Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi raised concerns that this failure “has implications for both the scope of humanitarian aid entering a particular area, and also for air force strikes in that area [due to calculations of ‘collateral damage’ — harm to uninvolved civilians]”.
Kadosh did not state when Tomer-Yerushalmi sent her letter.
He said the lawyer cited how the military — which has been laying siege to North Gaza since October 6 — initially assessed that only 3,000 civilians were living in the northern town of Beit Lahiya. But the figure turned out to be much higher as it was found later that about 14,000 people had been displaced from the town.
Kadosh said the letter prompted an internal inquiry, but the probe found that “there were no deficiencies in the scope of humanitarian aid that entered Beit Lahiya, and that the firing and attacks in the area did not cause any unusual harm to uninvolved people.”
Those findings contradict reports from the UN and other aid agencies operating in the Gaza Strip.
