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.
