I was asked at @bbc whether the @idf should have warned Palestinians before launching the rescue operation today. What do you think? pic.twitter.com/9zjh2Gp6Zo
— Jonathan Conricus (@jconricus) June 9, 2024
Former head of the IDF international communication branch, Jonathan Conricus, was interviewed by BBC about Operation Arnon, the daring daylight raid to rescue four hostages from Nuseirat. During the interview, he was asked why Israel did not give the Gazans an evacuation warning beforehand, given that the plans included an intense bombardment of the targeted neighborhood.
"Of course we cannot expect Israel to issue a warning ahead of the raid to extract hostages, because then the terrorists would kill the hostages, defeating the goal. I agree with you that we don't know if all the civilians who were killed were necessarily directly connected to the holding of Israeli hostages in Gaza for 8 months," he said.
"There was also significant resistance to the Israeli forces, including RPGs, heavy machine gun fire, and hand grenades. Some of the casualties were likely from reckless Palestinian fire," he noted.
He added: "Just like we saw in Rafah, Israelis were held by Palestinian civilians. Hamas gunmen may have been there also, but the bottom line is that we have complicity of Palestinian civilians."
