Moshe Yaalon Photo: GALI TIBBON / AFP / Profimedia
Former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said on Saturday that the Israeli army is carrying out “ethnic cleansing” in the Gaza Strip, causing outrage from the political class, reports AFP, taken from News.ro.
“The path we are on is one of conquest, annexation and ethnic cleansing,” said Moshe Yaalon during an interview with the private DemocratTV channel.
Asked if he thought Israel was headed for “ethnic cleansing”, Yaalon replied: “What is going on here? There is no more Beit Lahia, there is no more Beit Hanoun, the army intervened in Jabalia and, in reality , we clean the country of the Arabs”.
The reactions were immediate, with the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, calling it “a shame” that Israel had to have “such a character as head of the army and minister of defense”.
Netanyahu’s former chief of staff and adversary, Moshe Yaalon, 74, was Israel’s army chief between 2002 and 2005, shortly before Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Moshe Yaalon joined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and served as defense minister and deputy prime minister before resigning in 2016 after differences with Netanyahu. Since then, he has become his political opponent and rival for the position of prime minister.
Considered an iron man during his political career in the Likud, he allied himself in 2019 with the current leader of the opposition Yair Lapid before retiring from politics in 2021.
Accustomed to shocking statements, he recently supported soldiers who had threatened not to represent the army as reservists, saying that if he “had been an officer in Hitler’s army” he would have refused to do certain things, but he added that “it does not compare” with the situation in Israel.
