ISRAELI soldiers have described killings of Palestinian civilians and wanton destruction of property in the most serious challenge yet to the official army account of the Gaza war.
The new versions of events were given by graduates of a pre-military preparatory course at Oranim college in north Israel during a conference on the war, which was launched in December with the stated aim of halting Hamas rocket fire at Israel.
In the fighting, 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died.
According to a transcript of the conference made available to the Maariv and Haaretz newspapers yesterday, soldiers described loose rules of engagement and an atmosphere in which the lives of Palestinian civilians were "much less important than the lives of our soldiers".
The army yesterday ordered an investigation into the troops' accounts, while Israeli human rights groups called on Israel's attorney-general to reconsider his refusal to establish an independent body to examine army conduct.
The army has denied using disproportionate force and says troops did their utmost to minimise harm to non-combatants, but that Hamas used the civilian population as human shields.
But an infantry squad leader identified only by his first name, Aviv, painted a different picture when describing the orders for taking over Palestinian homes as military positions.
He said: "The directive was to enter a house with an armoured vehicle to break the door down, to start shooting inside and – I call it murder – to go from floor to floor and to shoot at everyone we identify.
"I asked myself how could this make sense? Higher-ups said it is permissible because everyone left (in Gaza City] is culpable because they didn't run away. This frightened me a bit. I tried to influence it as much as possible despite my low rank, to change it. In the end, the directive was to go into a house, switch on loudspeakers and tell them, 'You have five minutes to run away and whoever doesn't will be killed'."
Another soldier, Ram, recalled how a sniper adhered to loose rules of engagement rather than spare a Palestinian woman and her children who had just been released from confinement by troops.
Ram said: "The platoon commander set free the family and told them to turn right. A mother and two children didn't understand and turned left. (Officers] had forgotten to tell the sniper on the roof they were being set free and everything was OK and he should hold fire. You can say he acted … in accordance with the orders.
"The sniper saw a woman and children approaching him, past lines that no-one was to be allowed to cross," the soldier said. "He fired directly at them. I don't know if he fired at their legs, but in the end he killed them."
Ram added: "The general atmosphere among most of the people I spoke with is … that the lives of the Palestinians are something much less important than the lives of our soldiers."
An officer, Nir, described the destruction of an olive grove which he said had not been used for rocket firing. "When we were leaving, my operations officer approached me and said, 'Nir, take a look at something beautiful.' He showed me on his computer a picture of the area before we entered, pressed a button and showed how it looked afterwards. A bulldozer had completely levelled the entire area. Nothing was left."
Gur Rosenblatt, 35, an infantry major, disputed the picture emerging in the accounts. He said: "I was with my soldiers in the thick of the fighting and there was absolutely no incident where soldiers purposely hurt civilians or damaged property."
