Follow up to this previous article. Unfortunately it is mostly backpedalling. Edited for brevity.
Israel Defense Forces chief of operations Yisrael Ziv did not confirm Tuesday evening whether or not the army was justified in its accusation that Palestinian militants had loaded a Qassam rocket into a United Nations ambulance in the Gaza Strip. Ziv spoke at a press conference convened following a storm of controversy sparked by the release of video filmed from an IDF drone aircraft in which, Israel claimed, Palestinian militants in Gaza were loading a Qassam rocket into a United Nations Relief and Works Agency ambulance. The UN agency claimed the object was a stretcher. The IDF was reevaluating its claim - an apparent climbdown in a high-profile confrontation - and Ziv emphasized the IDF "is not free of mistakes." On Tuesday, the IDF removed from its Web site the military drone's video footage. When he was asked whether the object in the film was a Qassam rocket or a stretcher, Ziv said: "I suggest we don't deal with the object but rather with the context." He said that, regardless of what the filmed object actually was, UNRWA employees "are exploiting the organization's vehicles in order to support terror-related activities." He added that the presence of an UNRWA ambulance in a location where explosive devices had just been planted was also suspicious.
Professionals from air force intelligence are adamant they have the expertise and the necessary equipment to properly identify images the Israel Air Force camera recorded. They have said a Palestinian was carrying a Qassam rocket, or at least an anti-tank missile, into an UNRWA ambulance in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza. But in the wake of media pressure, the IDF has slightly modified its assessment, saying it still believes the object in the ambulance was a weapon but that it can't completely rule out the possibility that it was actually a stretcher. "The Israel Defense Forces is reviewing the original analysis of the footage, in which UNRWA vehicles are seen involved in suspicious activity in the combat zone in Gaza," an IDF statement said Tuesday. IDF officers said Monday night that "it's impossible to swear" the object wasn't a stretcher. |