“Liberate the soldier by killing him .... We will not have two Gilad Shalits at any price.””

PCF/ here

"The fatal shooting by Israeli soldiers of an Israeli man earlier this week as he tried to scale a fence into the Gaza Strip was reportedly part of a drastic procedure the army was supposed to have phased out several years ago.

The Israeli media reported that Yakir Ben-Melech, 34, had bled to death after he was shot under the "Hannibal procedure", designed to prevent Israelis from being taken captive alive by enemy forces.

One critic, Uri Avnery, a former Israeli legislator and leader of Gush Shalom, a small radical peace group, defined the procedure as meaning: “Liberate the soldier by killing him”.

The controversial directive, which was once one of the army’s best-kept secrets, was drafted more than 20 years ago after the Israeli government had come under domestic pressure to release hundreds of enemy prisoners for the return of three captured soldiers....

Israel was supposed to have stopped the Hannibal procedure after it withdrew its occupying army from south Lebanon in May 2000.

However, there is strong evidence that it has continued to be used, particularly during the events that triggered Israel’s attack on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and again last year during Israel’s assault on Gaza....

The use of the procedure was also confirmed by Zvika Fogel, a former deputy head of the army’s Southern Command, an area including Gaza. He told the Reshet B radio station: “The Hannibal procedure is definitely the right procedure. We cannot afford now some soulmate next to Gilad Shalit.”

However, in an apparent sign of continuing sensitivities on the issue, English-language editions of Israeli newspapers did not mention the procedure. The Jerusalem Post, Israel’s only major newspaper produced in English, excised a reference to the procedure included in an early report on its website, and the army’s spokesman avoided answering questions about whether the procedure had been used in Ben-Melech’s shooting.....

The order, described as the most controversial in the Israeli army’s history, was that “a dead soldier is better than a captive soldier”, according to Haaretz. The directive reportedly created a furore in the army at the time, with some commanders and rabbis considering it immoral, though no mention of it was made public for many years.

It was last used officially in October 2000, five months after Israeli forces withdrew from south Lebanon, when Hizbollah captured three soldiers along the border. Attack helicopters fired on a vehicle in which it was believed the soldiers were being held.The soldiers’ bodies were returned by Hizbollah, along with a captured Israeli businessman, four years later in a deal that included the release of 400 Palestinians and 35 Arab nationals...."