Through Katz's remarks, Israel acknowledges, boasts of its own war crimes: Islamic Jihad

Islamic Jihad said Friday that Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had explicitly acknowledged that the Israeli army is systematically committing war crimes in Gaza. Earlier in the day, the minister had stated that "the lock has been opened on the gates of hell in Gaza" and indicated that evacuation orders for civilian buildings would be issued.

"The lock has been opened on the gates of hell in Gaza," he wrote on the X platform, announcing that an initial evacuation order had been issued for a multi-story building that was about to be attacked. Shortly afterward, the Israeli army struck a tower in Gaza City, which the Israeli state says it aims to capture, on the 700th day of its devastating war against the Islamist movement Hamas.

"The statement of the war minister of the Zionist entity's government, Israel Katz, and his boasting about bombing residential towers in Gaza, while calling for civilians to evacuate their homes, is a clear and explicit acknowledgment of the war crimes committed by the entity's army in the Gaza Strip," the armed Palestinian group said.

"These crimes, along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's statement about opening the Rafah crossing for the evacuation of Gaza residents, confirm that the occupation army is conducting ethnic cleansing and a war of extermination before the eyes of the whole world," Islamic Jihad added.

Nearly two years after hostilities erupted following Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israeli territory on Oct. 7, 2023, the Gaza war has resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to a tally based on official data. Of the 251 people abducted that day, 47 remain hostages in Gaza, 25 of whom are dead, according to the Israeli army. The Israeli retaliation campaign has killed at least 64,300 people in the Palestinian enclave, mostly civilians, according to Gaza's health ministry, whose figures are regarded as reliable by the U.N.