A highly decorated former Israeli defense minister has caused a firestorm by accusing Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in northern Gaza.

Moshe Ya’alon, who served for three decades in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), including in the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit, and as the military’s chief of staff, also said that he believed Israel was losing its identity as a liberal democracy and becoming a “corrupt and leprous fascist Messianic state.”

“Conquering, annexing, ethnic cleansing – look at northern Gaza,” Ya’alon told Israel’s Democrat TV.

The interviewer expressed surprise at Ya’alon’s use of the phrase “ethnic cleansing,” asking, “Is that what you think – that we’re on the way there?”

“Why ‘on the way?’” he responded. “What’s happening there? There’s no Beit Lahia. There’s no Beit Hanoun. They’re currently operating in Jabalya, and essentially, they’re cleaning the area of Arabs,” he said, referring to the IDF.

The Israeli military has for two months been carrying out an intense and deadly operation in northern Gaza, targeting what it says are resurgent Hamas militants. It has told all civilians that for their own safety, they must go to a humanitarian area in southern Gaza. Thousands of Palestinian civilians have refused to leave, after more than a year of being told to evacuate to areas of Gaza that are then also targeted by Israeli strikes. Vanishingly few aid deliveries have been allowed into northern Gaza, according to the World Food Programme.

The Israeli military, responding to Ya’alon, denied that it was ethnically cleansing northern Gaza and said that it operated “in accordance with international law, and evacuates civilians based on operational necessity, for their own protection.”

The government has not yet presented a plan for post-war governance in Gaza. It has also denied it is implementing a “surrender or starve” proposal in northern Gaza put forward by a retired military general, Giora Eiland – though it did consider the plan.

“I held up a mirror to the statements of many ministers and Knesset (parliament) members in the government,” Ya’alon said in a second interview, with Channel 12. “Under this title, ethnic cleansing is effectively being carried out; I don’t have another word for it.”

The interviewer said that such a phrase evoked “dark periods” in history.

“That’s right, and I purposely used this term to ring the alarm bells,” the former defense minister responded.

Extremist factions in Israeli politics have called for Jewish settlement in Gaza nearly since the outset of the war , following Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack. Soldiers serving in Gaza have regularly promoted the return of Gush Katif – Gaza settlements destroyed when Israel unilaterally withdrew from the territory in 2005. And the ideas have gained traction: In October, hundreds of activists and several senior sitting ministers attended a Gush Katif conference near the Gaza border.

“We need to stay there, we need to establish a flourishing Jewish settlement there,” Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said in an interview with Israel TV channel Kan on Monday. “Both because this is the land of Israel and also because this guarantees the security of the residents of the South.”

Ya’alon joined a growing chorus in recent weeks referring to Israel’s military operation in northern Gaza as “ethnic cleansing.”

Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an editorial at the end of October titled: “If it looks liked ethnic cleansing, it probably is.” Human Rights Watch last month said in a 154-page report that Israel had overseen the forced mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza in a deliberate and systematic campaign that amounts to a war crime and a crime against humanity. Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top diplomat, said he believes that “it is not by chance that the words ‘ethnic cleansing’ are increasingly used to describe what is going on in north Gaza.”

The International Criminal Court last month issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, saying it had “reasonable grounds” to believe that Netanyahu bears criminal responsibility for war crimes including “starvation as a method of warfare” and “the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.” It also issued a warrant for a senior Hamas official.

The former defense minister said that upon seeing what’s happening in Gaza, he could no longer use the oft-cited monicker for the IDF as the “most moral” military in the world.

“The IDF is not the most moral army today,” he said. “It’s hard for me to say that.”

His intervention drew harsh criticism from former military colleagues. “To lie and harm the State of Israel and the IDF is not following a compass – this is lawlessness,” the politician Benny Gantz, who also served as IDF chief of staff, said in a statement. “The IDF has bent over backwards to minimize loss of civilian life,” Naftali Bennett, who also served in the Sayeret Matkal commando unit, said. “The population is moved away from danger for its own safety. It is not only the IDF’s right to do so, itis its obligation.”

Ya’alon said that while military commanders may believe their actions are purely operational, politicians have other plans in mind – and his words were aimed at them.

“I’m talking about soldiers moving populations, thinking it’s for operational purposes,” Ya’alon said. “But the intention of Smotrich, Ben Gvir, Strook, and Daniela Weiss” – all avowed settlers – “is an open and declared one.”