The Israeli newspaper “Haaretz” reported that the most urgent task facing Israel now is the return of Israelis detained by the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations in the Gaza Strip.
But the newspaper saw that this does not appear to be a top priority for the Netanyahu government, which appears to have “decided to activate the Hannibal measure.”
In an interview with CNN, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said that concern for the situation of the kidnapped “will not prevent us from implementing everything required to ensure the future of the State of Israel.”
Likewise, the Director General of the Prime Minister’s Office, Yossi Shelli, said, “The kidnapped people are a fact. The raids are a fact. This is the decision.”
Minister Bezalel Smotrich called during the government session to “harsh Hamas harshly and not take the issue of prisoners as an important consideration.”
The newspaper added: “The government and its president are forbidden from trying to save Israel’s national dignity and the dignity of the Israeli army on the backs of children, boys and girls, boys and girls, elderly men and women, helpless mothers and fathers, and the members of their families who are driven crazy by anxiety and sadness here in Israel.”
She continued: “No government, certainly not the most destructive and corrupt in the history of Israeli governments, has the right to traffic in the lives of innocent civilians and turn them into victims on the altar of its national dignity.”
What is the Hannibal Protocol?
- The Hannibal Protocol is a measure used by the Israeli army to prevent the kidnapping of its soldiers by Palestinian resistance factions or any other party, and its well-known formula is that “the kidnapping process must stop by all means, even if that comes at the expense of striking and harming our forces.”
- The Hannibal Protocol has been used several times since 2008, resulting on several occasions in the deaths of captured platoon members and soldiers.
- There appear to be two different versions of the Hannibal Protocol, a top-secret written one, intended for the IDF’s upper echelon of commanders, and an oral one for division commanders and lower levels.
- In more recent versions, the phrase “by all means” is often taken literally, as in the phrase “It is better for an IDF soldier to be killed than to be kidnapped.”
- In 2018, an Israeli government watchdog criticized the Hannibal Military Protocol, and the government’s Board of Auditors said the protocol lacked clarity on “the value of the kidnapped soldier’s life.”
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