IDF military commanders have concluded a preliminary investigation into the incident that has become known as "Black Friday" in Rafah, the morning during last summer's Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in which a Givati Brigade unit working to unearth tunnels in the southern Gaza city was attacked despite a humanitarian cease-fire being in effect, and the late Lt. Hadar Goldin was kidnapped.
The report is a preliminary probe by commanders analyzing the incident from a military perspective, not from a legal perspective. They make recommendations to the Military Advocate General, who makes the final decision about the legality of the incident in question and is not obligated to accept the commanders' version of events.
Army Radio released portions of the investigation on Tuesday, but it was not clear if the leaking of the probe's details was cleared with the Military Advocate General's office. The leaked details of the report reveal that senior IDF officials approved the decision-making of the commanders involved in the incident and of Givati Brigade commander Ofer Winter. Winter said during the investigation that "the Brigade's plan of operation took into account the cease-fire going into effect and was based on a situation in which, by 8 a.m., the forces would cease attacks and only after securing the territory, would initiate searches for tunnels. However this was not the situation, and when the cease-fire went into effect, forces from the patrol unit entered to search an area that had not been conquered and in an unsecured sector."
Winter added that "from an analysis of the unit's actions it can be determined that, in opposition to simple warfare and the simple instructions given during Operation Protective Edge, here, as a Brigade, we managed to confuse the fighters and to put them in an unreasonable situation. In those conditions, the situation should have been assessed with the regiment commander before the cease-fire went into place."
Once the "Hannibal Protocol" - the use of force in an area that the IDF believes the enemy is trying to kidnap a captured soldier - was declared, it was decided to operate heavy fire. Human rights groups and the Palestinians have claimed that the IDF used disproportionate force, a claim that Military Advocate General Danny Efroni is scheduled to rule on in the coming days. The details published from the investigation describe a different picture, in which the IDF reacted with proportinate force, and the estimation is that no criminal investigation into the matter will be pursued.
While the Palestinians claim that more than 100 people were killed in the incident in Rafah, the IDF believes the number was closer to a few dozen, at least half of which were terrorists and only a small number were civilians. Military commanders accepted Winter's stance that "our assumption was that Hadar Goldin was alive and in accordance, we used the necessary force to disrupt the movements of the [kidnapping] cell."
Winter explained during the investigation that the use of force was intended to cut off an escape lane for the terrorists to abscond with Goldin. At this stage, Winter said, the fire was meant to help the ground forces that continued to advance in Rafah. The commanders support the understanding that - only because of the force that was used - the terrorists did not succeed in exiting the tunnel. The probe found that IAF fighter jets hit 19 military targets. Ground forces, together with attack helicopters, fired hundreds of artillery rounds and missiles into the area, at an additional 14 military targets.
At the conclusion of the investigation senior IDF officials determined that the force used was proportionate and effective for the mission and in accordance with the scope of the event, and did not violate international law.