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The airstrike that devastated a building in Gaza that housed international press offices on May 15 had a justified military cause, the Israeli Army assured on Tuesday. A military statement maintains that Hamas intelligence services manufactured electronic warfare and cyberwar systems in that same 12-story tower to counter, among other defensive means, the Iron Dome shield that intercepts rockets fired from the Palestinian Strip. The building was vacated an hour in advance, after Israeli officials informed its occupants of the imminent bombing by text messages to mobile phones.
The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Gilad Erdan, already conveyed this information on Monday to the heads of the Associated Press (AP) news agency, which together with the Qatari channel Al Jazeera was one of the media that was based in the Al Yalaa building in the Gazati capital.
As reported by
The Times of Israel,
Erdan emphasized at the AP headquarters in New York that the operation had served to save many Israeli lives in the face of more than 4,000 rockets fired from Gaza by "a genocidal terrorist organization hiding in civilian areas." he said in reference to Hamas.
The diplomatic representative offered his country's cooperation for the reconstruction of the agency's offices in Gaza.
In a subsequent statement, the AP called the meeting with Erdan "positive and constructive," but cautioned that it had not yet received evidence to support its claims.
The agency insisted on requesting an independent investigation into the events.
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"The attack was designed to collapse the building, in order to guarantee the destruction of the special means [of electronic warfare]," the Israeli Armed Forces statement details. "The objective was of high military value and was approved in accordance with Army procedures and in accordance with international law," concludes the text, which is not accompanied by photographs, videos or other evidence to support the information.
Israel had so far avoided revealing the military objectives that justified the attack on a seemingly civilian residential and office building, claiming that it could compromise its military intelligence sources in Gaza. These data were only disclosed to Washington, confidentially, when the State Department protested the destruction of the headquarters of a US media outlet.
The Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, General Aviv Kohavi, told Israeli television at the end of May that the building had been “legitimately destroyed” and that this did not produce “an ounce of regret”. The general who led the recent war escalation - which lasted for 11 days and caused more than 250 Palestinian deaths and 13 in Isarel - also assured that, whether they knew it or not, AP journalists drank coffee every morning with electronic experts from Hamas in the cafeteria in the lobby of the Al Yalaa tower.
Ambassador Erdan was more cautious in his meeting with the president of the news agency, Gary Pruitt, in which he expressed his country's commitment to press freedom.
"Israel does not believe that the AP employees were aware of Hamas activities in the building, as it was a secret unit," he said.
In a meeting with foreign media, including EL PAÍS, the Israeli Defense Minister, former General Benny Gantz, on May 31, distanced himself from the statements of the Chief of the General Staff.
"He spoke in figurative terms, to describe an atmosphere," Gantz clarified then, who also insisted that Israel was not going to make the details of the attack public.
The Associated Press delegate for Israel and Palestine, Joe Federman, also present at the meeting with the foreign press, replied that his agency had never been warned of the presence of militiamen in the tower. Federman further warned Minister Gantz that General Kohavi's comments were "obviously false." "I have been many times in the AP offices in Gaza," he settled, "and I assure you that there was no cafeteria in that building."
