The incident began at around 4 a.m., when some 30 trucks carrying humanitarian aid arrived at the coast of Gaza City, to deliver food to Palestinians in the Rimal neighborhood.
Thousands of Palestinians rushed the trucks after they passed an IDF checkpoint in central Gaza, leading to a stampede in which dozens of Palestinians were killed and hundreds wounded, some after being run over by the trucks, according to the probe.
The IDF’s initial investigation found that some of the trucks managed to continue further north, where armed men reportedly opened fire at the convoy near Rimal and looted it.
Dozens of Palestinians who rushed the last truck in the convoy, further south, began to move toward an IDF tank and troops stationed at the military’s checkpoint, the investigation found.
An officer stationed in the area ordered soldiers to fire warning shots in the air as the Palestinians were within a few dozen meters, as well as gunfire at the legs of those who continued to move toward the troops, the probe said.
The IDF said that fewer than 10 of the casualties were a result of Israeli fire.
The IDF has coordinated several aid deliveries to northern Gaza in recent weeks, although this one was larger than usual. It said it would now look for a solution to prevent such incidents from happening again and was conducting probes into the incident.
The story has now largely disappeared from the headlines, as the less exciting truth has dampened the initial barely-disguised glee at this further Israeli outrage.
Who do you believe, then? An Islamist group that makes no secret of its strategy to kill as many Jews as possible and to destroy Israel with extreme violence, and which welcomes the death of as many Gaza civilians as possible to provoke a world-wide backlash against the Jewish state…or the IDF? For most major news outlets here the answer's clear enough. The Hamas version is given priority as the default truth, while further down there may be some brief mention of a different IDF story.
It's a strange war where the "attackers" do their best to minimise civilian casualties, while the "defenders" want to see as many dead as possible.
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