The Israel Defense Forces said that five soldiers were killed in a case of friendly fire during operations in Jabalya in northern Gaza.
The five soldiers who were killed on Wednesday included four sergeants and one captain, aged 20 to 22, who all belonged to the Paratroopers Brigade and were killed after a tank operating in the same battalion opened fire, the military acknowledged. Three others were seriously injured.
They were identified as Captain Roy Beit Yaakov, 22; Sergeant Gilad Arye Boim, 22; Sergeant Daniel Chemu, 20; Sergeant Ilan Cohen, 20; and Sgt. Betzlel David Shashuah, 21.
“An initial investigation into the deaths of five IDF soldiers reveals that IDF tanks, located dozens of meters away, identified a weapon and fired shells at an IDF force nearby,” the IDF said in a statement, per NBC News. “This force had entered the northern part of Gaza and occupied buildings along a logistic route. The tanks fired two shells for unclear reasons, resulting in seven more soldiers being injured, three severely.”
The IDF “is probing why the shells were fired and if the soldiers were mistaken for armed militants,” the statement added.
This incident raised the number of Israeli forces killed during operational accidents to 44.
Israeli forces have recently returned to northern Gaza to fight off Hamas, despite having previously operated there and claimed victory representing the difficulty of achieving their goals.
“Jabalya is not the Jabalya it used to be,” Brig. Gen. Itzik Cohen, commander of Division 162, said in December, adding that “hundreds of terrorists” had been killed and 500 suspects arrested.
It’s not the first time Israel has had to go back to a part of northern or central Gaza it had operated in to reengage with Hamas in areas it had previously cleared. Back in March, Israeli forces returned to the Shifa hospital in that they cleared during the early weeks of the war.
“The unfortunate reality for Israel is that the size of Israel’s ground force is insufficient to clear and simultaneously hold all of Gaza,” Bradley Bowman, a director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner regarding Israel’s return to the hospital.
Israel’s return to the north is also tangential to recent criticism in Israel and around the world that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not done enough to prepare and detail a post-war strategy for Gaza.
“The key to this goal is military action, and the establishment of a governing alternative in Gaza,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday. “In the absence of such an alternative, only two negative options remain: Hamas’s rule in Gaza or Israeli military rule in Gaza. The meaning of indecision is choosing one of the negative options. It would erode our military achievements, lessen the pressure on Hamas, and sabotage the chances of achieving a framework for the release of hostages.”
Gallant publicly opposed an Israeli occupation of Gaza, which ultranationalists included in Netanyahu’s pre-war governing coalition have called for in recent days.
The defense minister’s comments resemble those given by U.S. officials as well, which have continued to butt heads with Netanyahu.
“Military pressure is necessary but not sufficient to fully defeat Hamas,” U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters this week. “If Israel’s efforts are not accompanied by a political plan for the future of Gaza, and the Palestinian people, the terrorists will keep coming back.”
The United Stattes has hoped to convince Israel not to carry out full-scale operations in Rafah, the southern Gaza city along the Egyptian border. More than a million Palestinians have fled to the city, though it’s also where the remaining Hamas battalions are hiding. The U.S. and several western countries and international organizations have warned of catastrophic consequences if the civilians are not safeguarded.
Israel has operated in a limited capacity in parts of the city, while urging hundreds of thousands to evacuate the city.
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President Joe Biden has said he would limit U.S. military support for Israel if they conduct full-scale operations in Rafah, and the U.S. has not yet said that Israel’s actions have crossed that line. The administration held up a military aid package of thousands of bombs it does not want to see Israel use in Rafah.
Earlier this week, however, the Biden administration also announced its approval of a $1 billion weapon shipment to Israel.
