IDF soldiers should refuse orders which may be war crimes, Israeli ex-security adviser tells BBC

As someone who served four Israeli prime ministers and was deputy head of the country’s National Security Council, Eran Etzion’s judgement was trusted at the highest levels of the state.

A longstanding critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he is also someone whose years of public service earned him widespread respect.

But now Mr Etzion, a former soldier himself, is warning that Israel’s military – the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) – might be committing war crimes in northern Gaza. And he is suggesting that officers and troops should reject illegal orders.

“They should refuse. If a soldier or an officer is expected to commit something that might be suspected as a war crime, they must refuse. That’s what I would do if I were a soldier. That’s what I think any Israeli soldier should do,” he tells me.

We are sitting on the balcony of his home in Shoresh in central Israel.

Here there is the quiet sunshine of an autumn morning. A peaceful neighbourhood where some builders are working on house improvements.

Less than 40 miles down the road is the Gaza neighbourhood of Jabalia.

As Mr Etzion and I are speaking, doctors and medical staff at the Indonesian Hospital in Jabalia are sending desperate voice notes to the international community begging for aid.

One senior nurse – in a message heard by the BBC – speaks in an exhausted voice of relentless privations allegedly imposed by the Israelis besieging Jabalia.

“My friend, I’m so so tired,” he says. “I can’t explain how tired I am. The water is empty. We don’t have water. We contacted the Israeli force to allow us to charge water to the tank, but they don’t accept that…. And we don’t know what will happen tomorrow. The situation is very very bad.”

Another nurse says: “I am sorry for my language, I can’t talk well. I am very fatigued and dizzy. I haven’t eaten since yesterday. We try to give the food that we found to the patients and families and we don’t eat ourselves.”

Tens of thousands of people are now fleeing Jabalia as the Israeli army continues its offensive against what it says is an attempt by Hamas to regroup.

Mr Etzion is worried for the civilians of Jabalia and his country. “There is a very dangerous erosion of norms. There is a very widespread sense of revenge, of rage,” he says.

This is because, Mr Etzion says, Israel is in the grip of trauma after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks in which around 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 200 taken hostage into Gaza.

“The will to revenge could be understood. It’s human, but we’re not a gang, we’re not a terror organisation, and we’re not a militia. We’re a sovereign country. We have our history, we have our morals, we have our values, and we must operate under international law and under international standards if we want to continue to be a member of the international community, which we do.”

He is speaking out as a former soldier, as someone whose children served in the IDF, and whose family and friends still serve. “I’m just a concerned citizen trying to raise my voice. So that’s what I’m doing. I want to make sure that no soldier is involved in anything that could be constituted as a war crime.”

Israel has faced mounting international criticism over its conduct during the war. The United States has threatened to cut arms shipments if Israel does not surge aid into Gaza.

The UN has accused the Israelis of repeatedly blocking or impeding the transfer of aid, most recently into northern Gaza.

The IDF has consistently rejected allegations that it is implementing a deliberate policy of starvation to force residents to flee from Jabalia. Israel has long accused Hamas of using the civilian population as human shields, launching attacks from schools and medical facilities.

“Hamas does not hesitate to abuse Gazans, exploit them, steal aid from them, and forcefully prevent them from evacuating when it is necessary for them to do so,” the IDF said in May.

One of Britain’s most prominent war crimes lawyers, Prof Philippe Sands KC, told me that that while Israel had a right to self defence after the 7 October attacks, it was now violating international law.

“It has to be proportionate. It has to meet the requirements of international humanitarian law. It must distinguish between civilians and military targets.

“It doesn’t allow you to use famine as a weapon of war. It doesn’t allow you to forcibly deport or evacuate large numbers of people.

“So it’s impossible to see what is going on now in Gaza, as it’s impossible to see what happened on 7 October, and not say crimes are screaming out.”

Prof Sands has led the genocide case against Myanmar, and the case for Palestinian statehood at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

His book East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity won the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction. The book also details his own Jewish family’s experience of the Holocaust.

I ask if the crisis in Gaza makes him worry about the survival of international law.

He points to the fact that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defence minister.

The prosecutor also sought warrants for three Hamas leaders. All three, including Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, are now dead.

“It [international law] is not working on the ground in relation to Russia and Ukraine. It’s not working on the ground in relation to Sudan. It’s not working on the ground in relation to Palestine and Israel.

“There’s just no ifs and buts. We just have to, we have to recognize that. But that is not a reason to tear up the entire system.

“If you ask yourself what the alternative is, which is basically no pieces of paper with the words Treaties written on it, you’re back to the 1930s, and at least what we have now is a system of rules which allows people to stand up and say: ‘This is a violation of a treaty’.”

We asked the IDF for an interview but they said no spokesperson was available today, and referred us to an earlier statement which says: “The IDF will continue to act, as it always has done, according to international law.”

And today the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the army’s humanitarian relief wing, said it was their policy to facilitate the entrance of aid into Gaza “without limits”.

This is Israel’s narrative. But as scenes of civilian suffering continue to emerge from Jabalia it is being widely challenged.

With additional reporting by Rudabah Abbass, Haneen Abdeen and Alice Doyard

Correction 23 October 2024: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the ICC prosecutor is seeking an arrest warrant for the IDF chief of staff.