The British newspaper The Observer published a report in which it monitored the stories of 3 reserve soldiers in the Israeli army who refused to return to fight in the Gaza Strip.

The three soldiers had different motives for refusing to return to fighting in Gaza. One of them objected to the way the Israeli army was conducting the war, and another denounced the reluctance to agree to a deal that would return the Israeli detainees in Gaza and end the fighting.

The Observer quoted a reserve soldier named Yuval Green as saying that the destructive behavior he witnessed in Gaza by other soldiers "increased doubt and despair about the cycle of violence." He explained that he saw soldiers stealing all the time and had a special interest in necklaces with Arabic writing.

"The soldiers would enter houses for military reasons looking for weapons but it was more fun when they were looking for souvenirs and they had a special interest in necklaces with Arabic writing and they would collect them," he added.

The soldier recounts that one day he received an order from his field commander, along with other soldiers, to burn down one of the houses they had stormed, and that when he raised this with the command, he did not receive sufficient answers. He said, “If we are doing all this for no reason, I will not participate,” and he left the next day.

Fighting and recovering detainees

In turn, reserve soldier and civics teacher Tal Vardi, who trained reserve tank operators in northern Israel, spoke about the usefulness of the military presence in Gaza. “Any reasonable person can know that a military presence does not help in recovering the hostages,” he said. “If we are not able to return the hostages, all this leads only to more death on our side and the Palestinian side. I cannot justify this military operation anymore and I am not prepared to be part of an army that does this.”

Vardi considered that "some military operations put the lives of the hostages in danger and the army killed some of them by mistake."

For his part, reserve soldier Michael Ofer Ziv recounted his daily life in Gaza, where he worked as an operations officer and his job required him to stare for hours at screens showing live feeds from drones. “Suddenly you see a building smoking or a car you’ve been following for an hour suddenly disappearing in a cloud of smoke. It seemed unreal and some were happy to see it because it meant seeing Gaza destroyed,” he said.

He noted that the ground forces he served with "almost always" received clearance to fire, adding, "The air force clearance was mostly just a bureaucratic procedure. I was annoyed by the lack of clarity of the soldiers' rules of engagement, and these rules were much clearer during my mandatory service."

Ziv stressed that the Gaza war witnessed leniency regarding the rules of engagement, and explained that he made the decision not to return to Gaza after the Israeli government proceeded with the decision to invade Rafah instead of concluding a deal to exchange prisoners and detainees with the Palestinian resistance.