Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says that his country committed war crimes | Israel

Former Israel Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said that Israel committed “war crimes” in Gaza and said: “Thousands of innocent Palestinians are killed and many Israeli soldiers”.

Olmert, who acted as 12th Israel Prime Minister from 2006 to 2009, wrote in an opinion for the Israeli newspaper and website Haaretz that “the government of Israel is currently without a purpose, without goals or clear planning and without chances of success”.

He added: “Never since his establishment has waged the state of Israel such a war […] The criminal gang under the direction of Benjamin Netanyahu has also made a precedent in the history of Israel in this area.

Former Israeli Prime Minister and a former member of the Likud party, the same party as Netanyahu, wrote that the “senseless victims among the Palestinian population” have achieved “monstrous proportions” in the past few weeks.

“The recent operations in Gaza have nothing to do with legitimate war goals,” he added. “This is now a private political war. His immediate result is the conversion of Gaza into a humanitarian disaster area.”

Olmert said that he had quite often said that Israel had not committed war crimes in Gaza, and said with the conviction that “in no way a government official had given the order to make the Gazan civilian population indiscriminately”.

However, he added that in the past few weeks “I was no longer able. What we do in Gaza is now a war of devastation: indiscriminately, unlimited, cruel and criminal of civilians. This is the result of government policy – knowingly passionate, malignant, responsible, dictated.”

“Yes, Israel commits war crimes,” he concluded.

In an interview with the BBC, Olmert described the continuing conflict as “a war without purpose – a war without the chance to achieve something that can save the life of hostages”.

His comments on the British broadcaster had triggered a series of Israel, with the extreme right -wing parties of the country condemned his words that followed the party leader of the Democrats.

The Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar accused Olmert and Golan to “actively participate in a diplomatic campaign, in a propaganda war and in the legal war against the state of Israel and the IDF”.

The Minister of Education, Yoav Kisch, said that Olmert and Golan had joined a “radical left choir that had joined Israel in the international arena”.

“While IDF troops risk their lives against murderous terrorists who are looking for our destruction, he decides to put a knife into his back and stuck,” said Kisch.

The Minister of Social Equality, May Golan accused Olmert to spit “given the IDF soldiers”.

“To be precise, there are innocent people in Gaza – 58 of them,” she said, referring to the Israeli hostages that were held in the territory.

Some Israeli media have framed Olmert's statements in response to right -wing extremist outrage over the resumption of help in Gaza strips and the inflammatory rhetoric of several Israeli politicians.

The right -wing extremist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said that Israel “destroys everything that is left of the Gaza Strip”, and that “the army does not leave anything unexpected”. He explained: “We conquer, clean and stay in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed.”

Smotrich said the IDF “finally” focused on the civilian infrastructure of Hamas. “We eliminate ministers, bureaucrats, money handler – everyone who is civil rule of Hamas.”

On May 22, the Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin explained on Israel's television station 14: “The enemy is neither Hamas nor is it the military wing of Hamas.” Feiglin is a former member of the Israeli parliament (Knesset).

“Every child in Gaza is the enemy. We have to fill the Gaza and regulate it, and not a single Gazan child will remain there. There is no other victory,” he added.