Israel ordered ‘Hannibal Directive,’ killing own people held captive on Oct. 7

Israel ordered its military forces to implement a controversial procedure, which allows killing of its own civilians and soldiers held captive, after it was caught off guard by Hamas unprecedented operation on Oct.7, a new investigation has revealed.
The procedure, known as Hannibal Directive, is an Israeli military protocol that stipulates the use of maximum force to prevent the capture of soldiers at all costs — even at the cost of the death of the soldier.
The Hebrew edition of Israel’s newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth wrote on Thursday that on the day of Hamas Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, Israel’s military “ordered all of its combat units in practice to use the ‘Hannibal Procedure’ although without clearly mentioning this explicitly by name.”
The order was to stop “at all costs any attempt” by Hamas fighters to return to Gaza, even though they might hold captives.
According to another Israeli newspaper, Times of Israel, the Hannibal Protocol “allows soldiers to use potentially massive amounts of force to prevent a soldier from falling into the hands of the enemy.”
“This includes the possibility of endangering the life of the soldier in question in order to prevent his capture.”
During Hamas’s operation against the occupied territories, the resistance movement successfully captured a great number of Israeli forces and settlers.
According to Yediot Ahronoth, it is not clear how many of those captives were killed by Israeli forces during the operation.
Families of settlers killed by Israeli fire on October 7 demand probe