‘The disregard of Palestinian lives was so strong’: the Israeli soldiers refusing to fight

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For Michael Ofer-Ziv, an Israeli reservist soldier, the tipping point came in December. Three Israeli hostages had been accidentally shot dead by their own military in Gaza. He had spent the first two months of the war sparked by Hamas’ October 7 attacks serving as a control officer directing battalions in the strip from an operations room in southern Israel.

He had felt uneasy about some of the military’s behaviour, and the three hostages’ deaths brought things home. He could no longer see that the war – which he once supported – had a point at all.

“This was hostages, so we heard about [their deaths] in Israel,” he recalled thinking at the time. “But how many incidents like this, or similar to this, happened before that one, just that the victims were Palestinian, and we never heard about it? I'm sure there were, because there's just no chance that it was the first one,” he told The National in Tel Aviv last week.

By then, Gaza’s Health Ministry had recorded more than 17,000 deaths of Palestinians in the strip.

On December 17, Mr Ofer-Ziv, 29, was released from duty and told his commander he would not be returning. When he was called up again in June 2024, he refused the order.

Mr Ofer-Ziv is one of three Israeli reservists interviewed by The National who described how their experiences over the past year have driven them to refuse to continue serving.

They spoke of their horror at the scale of destruction in Gaza, and their belief that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is not prioritising attempts to reach a ceasefire to secure the return of the 101 hostages still held in the enclave.

The soldiers had agreed to serve following Hamas’s attack, which left around 1,200 people dead and saw 251 taken hostage to Gaza. But the course of the war has brought them to the conclusion that this is not a fight they want to continue.

“We’re killing Palestinians and innocent civilians. We're killing the hostages,” said Mr Ofer-Ziv, referring to the accidental shooting and other deaths of hostages in Israeli attacks in Gaza. “We're not even doing it to create a reality where we can make a deal. So what the hell are we doing?”

The war in Gaza has now killed more than 42,900 people and left tens of thousands more injured.

"We don't see how these barbaric bombardments will give us security in the long term," said another reservist, 26, who asked to remain anonymous.

The interviewees are among more than 120 soldiers who this month wrote to the Israeli government and military Chief of Staff, laying out how they had either already refused to continue serving, or would do so if Israel did “not change course immediately” and work towards a deal for the hostages’ release.

“It is now clear that the continuation of the war in Gaza not only delays the return of the hostages but also endangers their lives: many hostages have been killed by IDF bombings, many more than those who have been rescued in military operations,” the letter which was signed on October 9 read.

It was the second of two letters sent by Israeli soldiers in the past six months to the government and military leadership. The first letter attracted 42 signatures, the second 129 – an indication of the small but growing discontent in the Israeli ranks.

The signatories believe that Mr Netanyahu does not want the war to end: doing so would likely mean the collapse of his government, which still defines return of the hostages as a key war objective.

In response to the letter, right-wing government officials called for those refusing to serve – a taboo in Israeli society – to be jailed. The Israeli military was more reserved: army chiefs offered the signatories the chance to retract their refusals – which most did not – and then suspended them.

“They pulled a, you're not breaking up with me, I’m breaking up with you,” said Max Kresch, 28, an Israeli reservist who served on the Israel-Lebanon border for the first two months of the war. While agreeing with the need to defend Israel’, he had often felt uncomfortable around some of his peers’ behaviour.

Things intensified after October 7, and Mr Kresch’s team asked for his removal, he said. One factor was a Facebook post in which Mr Kresch opposed extreme views calling for Gaza to be flattened, and asked Israelis to build bridges with Arabs and Palestinians.

“That post got a lot of vitriol and a lot of hate, but for me it was really important to raise that voice,” he said.

As the war drags on, senior former Israeli officials are also warning against continuing to serve in the military.

“If you are a soldier or an officer, regular, permanent or reserve, it is your duty to refuse to take part in any action that constitutes a war crime," Eran Etzion, a former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council, wrote on X this week.

The views of the Israeli public are also changing. According to a poll released this month by the Jerusalem-based Israel Democracy Institute, more than half of Israelis think the war should end.

The reservists blame extreme, ultranationalist positions taken by ministers in Mr Netanyahu’s government that legitimise hardline positions that trickle down to the military and Israeli public.

“A lot of the time, the accountability standards are not in place, especially recently with this current government,” said Mr Kresch. “As soldiers, we're expected to obey policy that comes from a divisive, racist and very problematic government.”

That has influenced the way the war was run. Some of the behaviour in the war room made Mr Ofer-Ziv increasingly uneasy.

He never received an official copy of the rules of engagement, he said. “I know there were briefings being done with the soldiers on the field, but as an officer from my mandatory service, I remember the gaps between the official document that we had and the interpretation that we had for it. So, if there's not even a document, what the hell is happening?”

Neither his brigade, nor anyone he spoke to in the Israeli military, deliberately targeted civilians, but there was an apathy when killings did happen, he said. The unit he directed on the ground in Gaza would sometimes shoot dead Palestinians they came across. Commanders almost never questioned soldiers’ decision to shoot.

The upshot is that harmless civilians may have been killed and listed among the figures of dead Hamas militants.

“Whenever we would get a report from the field, for example, ‘we saw this and this, running this way, doing this […] and we shot them and now they're dead’ – we never challenged that report. We would never ask, ‘were they armed?’ Because we kind of assumed that they were, or that they were militants,” Mr Ofer-Ziv described.

“Almost any report of a contact with a person from the other side ended up with a report that came together like, ‘there was this and we shot them.’ That's it. That's the story. We would just list it off as a militant that was killed.”

So many civilians have been killed in Gaza because of "a disregard, a kind of shrugging our shoulders when something happens,” Mr Ofer-Ziv said. The attitude was, “There is a chance that person we're about to shoot now is not a militant, but there is a chance he is. A lot of people would be more inclined to shoot him, because in the worst case scenario, we kill the Palestinian. And who cares, right?”

Such behaviour violates international humanitarian law, which demands that in all armed conflicts, fighters must at all times distinguish between civilians and combatants.

The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment from The National, but told CNN that Mr Ofer Ziv’s claims around targeting civilians were “baseless, unfounded, and misrepresent the sensitivity, precaution, and strict obligation to international law with which the IDF selects and pursues its targets”.

There was also disregard for Palestinian property, he said. Mr Ofer-Ziv did not personally direct air strikes but witnessed conversations that encompassed the decision-making processes around targets.

Each unit would have an allocation of air strikes for a given day, some used to destroy buildings that could be used as attack launch points by Hamas. If a unit only needed five air strikes in a day, but had an allocation of nine, for example, they would find extra targets such as abandoned apartment blocks, just to use up their quota.

The UN estimates that there are 42 millions tonnes of rubble in Gaza, which will take at least 14 years and $1.2 billion US dollars to clear.

Again, international humanitarian law states that fighting parties must distinguish between civilian and military objectives. In its comments to CNN, the Israeli military said that it, "does not aim to inflict excessive damage to civilian infrastructure and strikes exclusively on the grounds of military necessity and in strict accordance with international law."

The government has become less interested in returning the hostages held by Hamas since the conflict’s focus shifted to fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon in a ground invasion that began last month, the interviewees said.

"It really has changed it," the anonymous reservist said. "I think that the importance of the hostages is not doubted more than it was before. But I think that it has shifted the attention, the spotlight."

Fighting in Gaza in the place of a political solution will only fuel further cycles of violence, the reservists said.

"While a ceasefire is the most important part right now, I believe that it is very, very detrimental to only speak of a ceasefire and not speak of a solution," he added. "Just a ceasefire would have us either not truly end violence, or even worse, ensure that the next October 7 and the next devastation of Palestinian society are basically certain."