Alwaght- The Hebrew-language version of Israeli newspaper Haaretz says Tel Aviv regime's military is intentionally targeting Palestinian civilians in Gaza as a form of collective punishment aimed at placing Hamas resistance group “in a problematic situation".
The newspaper states that, after a rocket allegedly launched by Hamas’ armed wing landed in Beersheva, the Israeli military "began to attack civilian targets, including population centers, with the goal of causing the residents to understand the price of escalation and placing Hamas in a problematic situation,” MintPress News reported.
In other words, the article acknowledges that the Israeli regime is deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza to collectively punish all those living in Gaza for the primitive rockets allegedly launched by Hamas into occupied territories.
The article goes on to claim that the regime’s deliberate targeting of civilian sites is a “change in policy” for the Tel Aviv, as past airstrikes had “focused on Hamas’ clear military objectives, mostly in areas where civilian presence is sparse.” Yet, past airstrikes have targeted civilian infrastructure, which were then labeled, after the fact, as Hamas military sites and assets.
Israeli regime forces have killed five Palestinians, including a pregnant woman and her 18-month-old daughter, in the besieged Gaza strip on Friday.
Gaza health officials said pregnant 23-year-old Inas Khammash and her 18-month daughter Bayan were killed in the Jaafari area after Israeli regime has launched 150 airstrikes on Gaza. A unnamed Palestinian man was also killed in the north of Gaza.
In a separate crime, Tel Aviv regime forces opened fire on Palestinian protesters taking part in March for Return rallies in the area between the occupied territories and the besieged Gaza Strip, leaving two people killed.
The tactics mentioned in the article seem to refer exclusively to Israeli airstrikes, as the article does not mention the fact that the regime, since March 30, has shot over 17,000 unarmed Palestinian civilians, killing at least 164, for approaching the Gaza-Israel border fence during recent protests. Furthermore, the IDF’s “change in policy” also comes after it was recently reported that Israeli regime has already killed a record number of Palestinian children in Gaza this year, with still just under five months to go.
Yet, in terms of airstrikes, this “new” Israeli policy of targeting civilians is unsurprising given that Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman infamously asserted earlier this year that “there are no innocent people” in Gaza, despite the fact that around half of all Gazans are under the age of 18. Furthermore, the Israeli regime had long targeted Gaza’s civilians in past military operations even before Hamas was voted into power in 2007, suggesting that Tel Aviv's justification of “punishing Hamas” is merely the pretext to justify the climbing civilian death toll in Gaza in the absence of a major military conflict.
The startling claim, which some analysts have called an open admission of war crimes, comes after a week of terror for Gazan civilians that resulted in several gruesome civilian deaths and the destruction of one of Gaza City’s most important cultural centers.
Israeli regime bombed the Said al-Mishal Cultural Center on Thursday.
According to MintPress News, the admission in Israeli paper is the ultimate expression of the regime's impunity, as its war crimes against Palestinians have been ignored for so long that it now openly admits that it is targeting civilians in the world’s largest "open air prison."
