Israeli army alters policy on force used to foil captures

BY ISABEL KERSHNER / The New York Times

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JERUSALEM — The Israeli military has canceled a contentious directive known as the Hannibal procedure, which calls for the use of maximum force to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers, even at the risk of harming them. A military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in accordance with army rules, said on Tuesday that the chief of staff, Lt. Gen.

Gadi Eisenkot, had given instructions several weeks ago to revoke the decades-old directive. The official said the chief of staff had established a team to formulate a new procedure for such situations. The Hannibal procedure was last invoked, with devastating consequences, during the war in Gaza in 2014.

Palestinian militants ambushed Israeli soldiers soon after a truce took effect on the outskirts of Rafah, in southern Gaza, and dragged one of them, 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin, into a tunnel.

At least 135 Palestinians were said to have been killed as Israeli forces unleashed a barrage of artillery and airstrikes meant to prevent the militants from taking Goldin deeper into the Gaza Strip. The episode became a focus of international scrutiny and condemnation.

Amnesty International said there was strong evidence that Israel had carried out war crimes by bombarding residential areas of Rafah.

How this transcription was made

Date confirmed on the page (masthead).

Context added by this archive

New York Times copy running in an Alabama daily.

This is the most consequential Eisenkot record in the batch after the Forum op-ed: a US paper reporting, in staff-standard wire prose, that Eisenkot personally ordered the revocation of a directive under which at least 135 Palestinians were killed in Rafah in a single episode, and quoting Amnesty International's finding of strong evidence of war crimes.

The number 135 is printed. Eisenkot is again the reformer in the story's grammar — the man who cancelled the order — and his own command of Northern Command in 2008 is nowhere mentioned.

A boxed explainer beside the text reads "HANNIBAL PROCEDURE / First drawn up in the 1980s, the procedure does not allow Israeli soldiers to intentionally kill — or harm in a way that would lead to death — to prevent capture." Photo caption: "Israel Defense Forces tanks in a sunflower field near the border with Gaza in Sderot, Israel, July 18, 2014." Credit: Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times, File.

Cite this clipping

"Israeli army alters policy on force used to foil captures," The Anniston Star, 29 June 2016. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2016-023. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2016-023