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‘I’M BORED, SO I SHOOT’: THE ISRAELI ARMY’S APPROVAL OF
FREE-FOR-ALL VIOLENCE IN GAZA  
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Oren Ziv
July 8, 2024
+972 Magazine
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_ Israeli soldiers describe the near-total absence of firing
regulations in the Gaza war, with troops shooting as they please,
setting homes ablaze, and leaving corpses on the streets — all with
their commanders’ permission. _

Israeli soldiers from the 8717 Battalion of the Givati Brigade
opertin in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip, December 28, 2023 (Yonatan
Sindel/Flash90 // +972 Magazine),

 

In early June, Al Jazeera aired a series of disturbing videos
[[link removed]] revealing what it
described as “summary executions”: Israeli soldiers shooting dead
several Palestinians walking near the coastal road in the Gaza Strip,
on three separate occasions. In each case, the Palestinians appeared
unarmed and did not pose any imminent threat to the soldiers.

Such footage is rare, due to the severe constraints
[[link removed]] faced by
journalists in the besieged enclave and the constant danger
[[link removed]] to
their lives. But these executions, which did not appear to have any
security rationale, are consistent with the testimonies of six Israeli
soldiers who spoke to +972 Magazine and Local Call following their
release from active duty in Gaza in recent months. Corroborating the
testimonies of Palestinian eyewitnesses
[[link removed]] and doctors
[[link removed]] throughout
the war, the soldiers described being authorized to open fire on
Palestinians virtually at will, including civilians.

The six sources — all except one of whom spoke on the condition of
anonymity — recounted how Israeli soldiers routinely executed
Palestinian civilians simply because they entered an area that the
military defined as a “no-go zone.” The testimonies paint a
picture of a landscape littered with civilian corpses
[[link removed]], which are left to rot or
be eaten by stray animals; the army only hides them from view ahead of
the arrival of international aid convoys, so that “images of people
in advanced stages of decay don’t come out.” Two of the soldiers
also testified to a systematic policy of setting Palestinian homes on
fire after occupying them.

Several sources described how the ability to shoot without
restrictions gave soldiers a way to blow off steam or relieve the
dullness of their daily routine. “People want to experience the
event [fully],” S., a reservist who served in northern Gaza,
recalled. “I personally fired a few bullets for no reason, into the
sea or at the sidewalk or an abandoned building. They report it as
‘normal fire,’ which is a codename for ‘I’m bored, so I
shoot.'”

Since the 1980s, the Israeli military has refused to disclose its
open-fire regulations, despite various petitions to the High Court of
Justice. According to political sociologist Yagil Levy
[[link removed]], since the
Second Intifada, “the army has not given soldiers written rules of
engagement,” leaving much open to the interpretation of soldiers in
the field and their commanders. As well as contributing to the killing
of over 38,000 Palestinians, sources testified that these lax
directives were also partly responsible for the high number of
soldiers killed by friendly fire in recent months.

 
Israeli soldiers from the 8717 Battalion of the Givati Brigade
operating in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, during a military
operation, December 28, 2023.  (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90  //
 Haaretz)
“There was total freedom of action,” said B., another soldier who
served in the regular forces in Gaza for months, including in his
battalion’s command center. “If there is [even] a feeling of
threat, there is no need to explain — you just shoot.” When
soldiers see someone approaching, “it is permissible to shoot at
their center of mass [their body], not into the air,” B. continued.
“It’s permissible to shoot everyone, a young girl, an old
woman.”

B. went on to describe an incident in November when soldiers killed
several civilians during the evacuation of a school close to the
Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, which had served as a shelter for
displaced Palestinians. The army ordered the evacuees to exit to the
left, toward the sea, rather than to the right, where the soldiers
were stationed. When a gunfight erupted inside the school, those who
veered the wrong way in the ensuing chaos were immediately fired at.

“There was intelligence that Hamas wanted to create panic,” B.
said. “A battle started inside; people ran away. Some fled left
toward the sea, [but] some ran to the right, including children.
Everyone who went to the right was killed — 15 to 20 people. There
was a pile of bodies.”

‘People shot as they pleased, with all their might’

B. said that it was difficult to distinguish civilians from combatants
in Gaza, claiming that members of Hamas often “walk around without
their weapons.” But as a result, “every man between the ages of 16
and 50 is suspected of being a terrorist.”

“It is forbidden to walk around, and everyone who is outside is
suspicious,” B. continued. “If we see someone in a window looking
at us, he is a suspect. You shoot. The [army’s] perception is that
any contact [with the population] endangers the forces, and a
situation must be created in which it is forbidden to approach [the
soldiers] under any circumstances. [The Palestinians] learned that
when we enter, they run away.”

Even in seemingly unpopulated or abandoned areas of Gaza, soldiers
engaged in extensive shooting in a procedure known as “demonstrating
presence.” S. testified that his fellow soldiers would “shoot a
lot, even for no reason — anyone who wants to shoot, no matter what
the reason, shoots.” In some cases, he noted, this was “intended
to … remove people [from their hiding places] or to demonstrate
presence.”

M., another reservist who served in the Gaza Strip, explained that
such orders would come directly from the commanders of the company or
battalion in the field. “When there are no [other] IDF forces [in
the area] … the shooting is very unrestricted, like crazy. And not
just small arms: machine guns, tanks, and mortars.”

Even in the absence of orders from above, M. testified that soldiers
in the field regularly take the law into their own hands. “Regular
soldiers, junior officers, battalion commanders — the junior ranks
who want to shoot, they get permission.”

S. remembered hearing over the radio about a soldier stationed in a
protective compound who shot a Palestinian family walking around
nearby. “At first, they say ‘four people.’ It turns into two
children plus two adults, and by the end it’s a man, a woman, and
two children. You can assemble the picture yourself.”

Only one of the soldiers interviewed for this investigation was
willing to be identified by name: Yuval Green, a 26-year-old reservist
from Jerusalem who served in the 55th Paratroopers Brigade in November
and December last year (Green recently signed a letter
[[link removed]] by 41 reservists declaring
their refusal to continue serving in Gaza, following the army’s
invasion of Rafah). “There were no restrictions on ammunition,”
Green told +972 and Local Call. “People were shooting just to
relieve the boredom.”

Green described an incident that occurred one night during the Jewish
festival of Hanukkah in December, when “the whole battalion opened
fire together like fireworks, including tracer ammunition [which
generates a bright light]. It made a crazy color, illuminating the
sky, and because [Hannukah] is the ‘festival of lights,’ it became
symbolic.”

 
Israeli soldiers from the 8717 Battalion of the Givati Brigade
operating in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip, December 28, 2023.
 (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90  //  Haaretz)
C., another soldier who served in Gaza, explained that when soldiers
heard gunshots, they radioed in to clarify whether there was another
Israeli military unit in the area, and if not, they opened fire.
“People shot as they pleased, with all their might.” But as C.
noted, unrestricted shooting meant that soldiers are often exposed to
the huge risk of friendly fire — which he described as “more
dangerous than Hamas.” “On multiple occasions, IDF forces fired in
our direction. We didn’t respond, we checked on the radio, and no
one was hurt.” 

At the time of writing, 324 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza
since the ground invasion began, at least 28
[[link removed]] of
them by friendly fire according to the army. In Green’s experience,
such incidents were the “main issue” endangering soldiers’
lives. “There was quite a bit [of friendly fire]; it drove me
crazy,” he said. 

For Green, the rules of engagement also demonstrated a deep
indifference
[[link removed]] to the fate
of the hostages. “They told me about a practice of blowing up
tunnels, and I thought to myself that if there were hostages [in
them], it would kill them.” After Israeli soldiers in Shuja’iyya
killed three hostages waving white flags in December, thinking they
were Palestinians
[[link removed]],
Green said he was angry, but was told “there’s nothing we can
do.” “[The commanders] sharpened procedures, saying ‘You have to
pay attention and be sensitive, but we are in a combat zone, and we
have to be alert.’”

B. confirmed that even after the mishap in Shuja’iyya, which was
said to be “contrary to the orders” of the military, the open-fire
regulations did not change. “As for the hostages, we didn’t have a
specific directive,” he recalled. “[The army’s top brass] said
that after the shooting of the hostages, they briefed [soldiers in the
field]. [But] they didn’t talk to us.” He and the soldiers who
were with him heard about the shooting of the hostages only two and a
half weeks after the incident, after they left Gaza.

“I’ve heard statements [from other soldiers] that the hostages are
dead, they don’t stand a chance, they have to be abandoned,” Green
noted. “[This] bothered me the most … that they kept saying,
‘We’re here for the hostages,’ but it is clear that the war
harms the hostages. That was my thought then; today it turned out to
be true.”

 
Israeli soldiers from the 8717 Battalion of the Givati Brigade
operating in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, December 28,
2023.  (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90  //  Haaretz)
‘A building comes down, and the feeling is, “Wow, what fun”’

A., an officer who served in the army’s Operations Directorate,
testified that his brigade’s operations room — which coordinates
the fighting from outside Gaza, approving targets and preventing
friendly fire — did not receive clear open-fire orders to transmit
to soldiers on the ground. “From the moment you enter, at no point
is there a briefing,” he said. “We didn’t receive instructions
from higher up to pass on to the soldiers and battalion
commanders.” 

He noted that there were instructions not to shoot along humanitarian
routes, but elsewhere, “you fill in the blanks, in the absence of
any other directive. This is the approach: ‘If it is forbidden
there, then it is permitted here.’”

A. explained that shooting at “hospitals, clinics, schools,
religious institutions, [and] buildings of international
organizations” required higher authorization. But in practice, “I
can count on one hand the cases where we were told not to shoot. Even
with sensitive things like schools, [approval] feels like only a
formality.”

In general, A. continued, “the spirit in the operations room was
‘Shoot first, ask questions later.’ That was the consensus … No
one will shed a tear if we flatten a house when there was no need, or
if we shoot someone who we didn’t have to.” 

A. said he was aware of cases in which Israeli soldiers shot
Palestinian civilians who entered their area of operation, consistent
with a Haaretz investigation
[[link removed]] into
“kill zones” in areas of Gaza under the army’s occupation.
“This is the default. No civilians are supposed to be in the area,
that’s the perspective. We spotted someone in a window, so they
fired and killed him.” A. added that it often was not clear from the
reports whether soldiers had shot militants or unarmed civilians —
and “many times, it sounded like someone was caught up in a
situation, and we opened fire.”

But this ambiguity about the identity of victims meant that, for A.,
military reports about the numbers of Hamas members killed could not
be trusted. “The feeling in the war room, and this is a softened
version, was that every person we killed, we counted him as a
terrorist,” he testified.

“The aim was to count how many [terrorists] we killed today,” A.
continued. “Every [soldier] wants to show that he’s the big guy.
The perception was that all the men were terrorists. Sometimes a
commander would suddenly ask for numbers, and then the officer of the
division would run from brigade to brigade going through the list in
the military’s computer system and count.”

A.’s testimony is consistent with a recent report
[[link removed]] from the Israeli
outlet Mako, about a drone strike by one brigade that killed
Palestinians in another brigade’s area of operation. Officers from
both brigades consulted on which one should register the
assassinations. “What difference does it make? Register it to both
of us,” one of them told the other, according to the publication.

During the first weeks after the Hamas-led October 7 attack, A.
recalled, “people were feeling very guilty that this happened on our
watch,” a feeling that was shared among the Israeli public writ
large — and quickly transformed into a desire for retribution.
“There was no direct order to take revenge,” A. said, “but when
you reach decision junctures, the instructions, orders, and protocols
[regarding ‘sensitive’ cases] only have so much influence.”

When drones would livestream footage of attacks in Gaza, “there were
cheers of joy in the war room,” A. said. “Every once in a while, a
building comes down … and the feeling is, ‘Wow, how crazy, what
fun.’”

 
Palestinians at the site of a mosque destroyed in an Israeli
airstrike, near the Shaboura refugee camp in Rafah, southern Gaza
Strip, April 26, 2024.  (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90  //
 Haaretz)
A. noted the irony that part of what motivated Israelis’ calls for
revenge was the belief that Palestinians in Gaza rejoiced in the death
and destruction of October 7. To justify abandoning the distinction
between civilians and combatants, people would resort to such
statements as “‘They handed out sweets,’ ‘They danced after
October 7,’ or ‘They elected Hamas’ … Not everyone, but also
quite a few, thought that today’s child [is] tomorrow’s terrorist.

“I, too, a rather left-wing soldier, forget very quickly that these
are real homes [in Gaza],” A. said of his experience in the
operations room. “It felt like a computer game. Only after two weeks
did I realize that these are [actual] buildings that are falling: if
there are inhabitants [inside], then [the buildings are collapsing] on
their heads, and even if not, then with everything inside them.”

‘A horrific smell of death’

Multiple soldiers testified that the permissive shooting policy has
enabled Israeli units to kill Palestinian civilians even when they are
identified as such beforehand. D., a reservist, said that his brigade
was stationed next to two so-called “humanitarian” travel
corridors, one for aid organizations and one for civilians fleeing
from the north to the south of the Strip. Within his brigade’s area
of operation, they instituted a “red line, green line” policy,
delineating zones where it was forbidden for civilians to enter.

According to D., aid organizations were permitted to travel into these
zones with prior coordination (our interview was conducted before a
series of Israeli precision strikes killed
[[link removed]] seven
World Central Kitchen employees), but for Palestinians it was
different. “Anyone who crossed into the green area would become a
potential target,” D. said, claiming that these areas were
signposted to civilians. “If they cross the red line, you report it
on the radio and you don’t need to wait for permission, you can
shoot.”

Yet D. said that civilians often came into areas where aid convoys
passed through in order to look for scraps that might fall from the
trucks; nonetheless, the policy was to shoot anyone who tried to
enter [[link removed]].
“The civilians are clearly refugees, they are desperate, they have
nothing,” he said. Yet in the early months of the war, “every day
there were two or three incidents with innocent people or [people] who
were suspected of being sent by Hamas as spotters,” whom soldiers in
his battalion shot.

The soldiers testified that throughout Gaza, corpses of Palestinians
in civilian clothes remained scattered along roads and open ground.
“The whole area was full of bodies,” said S., a reservist.
“There are also dogs, cows, and horses that survived the bombings
and have nowhere to go. We can’t feed them, and we don’t want them
to get too close either. So, you occasionally see dogs walking around
with rotting body parts. There is a horrific smell of death.”

 
Rubbles of houses destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in the Jabalia area
in the northern Gaza Strip, October 11, 2023.  (Photo: Atia
Mohammed/Flash90  //  Haaretz)
But before the humanitarian convoys arrive, S. noted, the bodies are
removed. “A D-9 [Caterpillar bulldozer] goes down, with a tank, and
clears the area of corpses, buries them under the rubble, and flips
[them] aside so that the convoys don’t see it — [so that] images
of people in advanced stages of decay don’t come out,” he
described. 

“I saw a lot of [Palestinian] civilians – families, women,
children,” S. continued. “There are more fatalities than are
reported. We were in a small area. Every day, at least one or two
[civilians] are killed [because] they walked in a no-go area. I
don’t know who is a terrorist and who is not, but most of them did
not carry weapons.”

Green said that when he arrived in Khan Younis at the end of December,
“We saw some indistinct mass outside a house. We realized it was a
body; we saw a leg. At night, cats ate it. Then someone came and moved
it.” 

A non-military source who spoke to +972 and Local Call after visiting
northern Gaza also reported seeing bodies strewn around the area.
“Near the army compound between the northern and southern Gaza
Strip, we saw about 10 bodies shot in the head, apparently by a
sniper, [seemingly while] trying to return to the north,” he said.
“The bodies were decomposing; there were dogs and cats around
them.”

“They don’t deal with the bodies,” B. said of the Israeli
soldiers in Gaza. “If they’re in the way, they get moved to the
side. There’s no burial of the dead. Soldiers stepped on bodies by
mistake.”

Last month, Guy Zaken, a soldier who operated D-9 bulldozers in
Gaza, testified
[[link removed]] before
a Knesset committee that he and his crew “ran over hundreds of
terrorists, dead and alive.” Another soldier he served with
subsequently committed suicide.
 

[[link removed]]

Watch here [[link removed]]

‘Before you leave, you burn down the house’

Two of the soldiers interviewed for this article also described how
burning Palestinian homes has become a common practice among Israeli
soldiers, as first reported in depth by Haaretz
[[link removed]] in
January. Green personally witnessed two such cases — the first an
independent initiative by a soldier, and the second by commanders’
orders — and his frustration with this policy is part of what
eventually led him to refuse further military service. 

When soldiers occupied homes, he testified, the policy was “if you
move, you have to burn down the house.” Yet for Green, this made no
sense: in “no scenario” could the middle of the refugee camp be
part of any Israeli security zone that might justify such destruction.
“We are in these houses not because they belong to Hamas operatives,
but because they serve us operationally,” he noted. “It is a house
of two or three families — to destroy it means they will be
homeless.

“I asked the company commander, who said that no military equipment
[could be] left behind, and that we did not want the enemy to see our
fighting methods,” Green continued. “I said I would do a search
[to make sure] there was no [evidence of] combat methods left behind.
[The company commander] gave me explanations from the world of
revenge. He said they were burning them because there were no D-9s or
IEDs from an engineering corp [that could destroy the house by other
means]. He received an order and it didn’t bother him.” 

“Before you leave, you burn down the house — every house,” B.
reiterated. “This is backed up at the battalion commander level.
It’s so that [Palestinians] won’t be able to return, and if we
left behind any ammunition or food, the terrorists won’t be able to
use it.”

Before leaving, soldiers would pile up mattresses, furniture, and
blankets, and “with some fuel or gas cylinders,” B. noted, “the
house burns down easily, it’s like a furnace.” At the beginning of
the ground invasion, his company would occupy houses for a few days
and then move on; according to B., they “burned hundreds of houses.
There were cases where soldiers set a floor alight, and other soldiers
were on a higher floor and had to flee through the flames on the
stairs or choked on smoke.”

Green said the destruction the military has left in Gaza is
“unimaginable.” At the beginning of the fighting, he recounted,
they were advancing between houses 50 meters from each other, and many
soldiers “treated the houses [like] a souvenir shop
[[link removed]],” looting
whatever their residents hadn’t managed to take with them.

“In the end you die of boredom, [after] days of waiting there,”
Green said. “You draw on the walls, rude things. Playing with
clothes, finding passport photos they left, hanging a picture of
someone because it’s funny. We used everything we found: mattresses,
food, one found a NIS 100 bill [around $27] and took it.”

“We destroyed everything we wanted to,” Green testified. “This
is not out of a desire to destroy, but out of total indifference to
everything that belongs to [Palestinians]. Every day, a D-9 demolishes
houses. I haven’t taken before-and-after photos, but I’ll never
forget how a neighborhood that was really beautiful … is reduced to
sand.”

The IDF Spokesperson responded to our request for comment with the
following statement: “Open-fire instructions were given to all IDF
soldiers fighting in the Gaza Strip and on the borders upon entering
combat. These instructions reflect the international law to which the
IDF is bound. The open-fire instructions are regularly reviewed and
updated in light of the changing operational and intelligence
situation, and approved by the most senior officials in the IDF.

“The open-fire instructions provide a relevant response to all
operational situations, and the possibility in any case of risk to our
forces full operational freedom of action to remove threats. This,
while giving tools to the forces to deal with complex situations in
the presence of a civilian population, and while emphasizing the
reduction of harm to people who are not identified as enemies or who
do not pose a threat to their lives. Generic directives regarding the
open-fire instructions such as those described in the query are
unknown and to the extent that they were given, they are in conflict
with the army’s orders. 

“The IDF investigates its activities and draws lessons from
operational events, including the tragic event of the accidental
killing of the late Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz, and Samer Talalka.
Lessons learned from the investigation of the incident were
transferred to the fighting forces in the field in order to prevent a
repeat of this type of incident in the future. 

“As part of the destruction of Hamas’ military capabilities, an
operational need arises, among other things, to destroy or attack
buildings where the terrorist organization places combat
infrastructure. This also includes buildings that Hamas regularly
converted for fighting. Meanwhile, Hamas makes systematic military use
of public buildings that are supposed to be used for civilian
purposes. The army’s orders regulate the approval process, so that
damage to sensitive sites must be approved by senior commanders who
take into account the impact of the damage to the structure on the
civilian population, and this in the face of the military need to
attack or demolish the structure. The decision-making of these senior
commanders is done in an orderly and balanced manner.

“The burning of buildings that is not necessary for operational
purposes is against the orders of the army and the values ​​of the
IDF.

“In the framework of the fighting and subject to the orders of the
army, it is possible to use enemy property for essential military
purposes, as well as take property of the terrorist organizations
subject to orders as spoils of war. At the same time, taking property
for private purposes constitutes looting and is prohibited according
to the Law of Military Jurisdiction. Incidents in which forces acted
not in accordance with orders and the law will be investigated.”

_[OREN ZIV is a photojournalist, reporter for Local Call, and a
founding member of the Activestills photography collective.]_

[[link removed]]

_OUR TEAM HAS BEEN DEVASTATED BY THE HORRIFIC EVENTS OF THIS LATEST
WAR. THE WORLD IS REELING FROM ISRAEL’S UNPRECEDENTED ONSLAUGHT ON
GAZA, INFLICTING MASS DEVASTATION AND DEATH UPON BESIEGED
PALESTINIANS, AS WELL AS THE ATROCIOUS ATTACK AND KIDNAPPINGS BY HAMAS
IN ISRAEL ON OCTOBER 7. OUR HEARTS ARE WITH ALL THE PEOPLE AND
COMMUNITIES FACING THIS VIOLENCE. _

_We are in an extraordinarily dangerous era in Israel-Palestine. The
bloodshed has reached extreme levels of brutality and threatens to
engulf the entire region. Emboldened settlers in the West Bank, backed
by the army, are seizing the opportunity to intensify their attacks on
Palestinians. The most far-right government in Israel’s history is
ramping up its policing of dissent, using the cover of war to silence
Palestinian citizens and left-wing Jews who object to its policies._

_This escalation has a very clear context, one that +972 has spent the
past 14 years covering: Israeli society’s growing racism and
militarism, entrenched occupation and apartheid, and a normalized
siege on Gaza._

_We are well positioned to cover this perilous moment – but we need
your help to do it. This terrible period will challenge the humanity
of all of those working for a better future in this land. Palestinians
and Israelis are already organizing and strategizing to put up the
fight of their lives._

_CAN WE COUNT ON YOUR SUPPORT 
[[link removed]]? +972 MAGAZINE IS A LEADING
MEDIA VOICE OF THIS MOVEMENT, A DESPERATELY NEEDED PLATFORM WHERE
PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELI JOURNALISTS, ACTIVISTS, AND THINKERS CAN
REPORT ON AND ANALYZE WHAT IS HAPPENING, GUIDED BY HUMANISM, EQUALITY,
AND JUSTICE. JOIN US._

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