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A former Israeli defence minister has accused Israel of committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, drawing a sharp rebuke from government ranks.
Moshe Yaalon, a hawkish former general, told Israeli media that hardliners in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right cabinet were looking to chase Palestinians from northern Gaza and wanted to re-establish Jewish settlements there.
“I am compelled to warn about what is happening there and is being concealed from us,” Yaalon told Israel’s public broadcaster Kan yesterday. “At the end of the day, war crimes are being committed.”
Yaalon is a former army chief of staff who served as defence minister under Netanyahu from 2013-16, and has been a fierce critic of the prime minister ever since.
Netanyahu’s Likud party accused him of spreading ‘slanderous lies’, while Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, head of a small rightist party, said his accusations were baseless.
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