From the Liveblog of
Thursday, May 7, 2026
Former senior IDF officers deny High Court rulings led to tightening of open-fire rules along Gaza border
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Two former senior military officers deny claims that have been recirculated in recent days that High Court of Justice decisions led to a tightening of the IDF’s open-fire regulations at the Gaza border.
Such claims have been made since the start of the war by government ministers and others who oppose the establishment of a state commission of inquiry into Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, whose members would be selected by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. They claim that the High Court bears responsibility for the events of October 7 due to the ostensible restrictions it had imposed on the military regarding its open-fire regulation on the border with the Gaza Strip during Hamas-led riots in 2018.
In 2018, the High Court rejected a petition by human rights groups calling for stricter IDF open-fire regulations during the mass border riots, saying it had very little authority to intervene.
In an op-ed published by Channel 12 news, Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon — the head of the Operations Directorate at the time and responsible for determining the IDF’s rules of engagement — and the head of the International Law Department in the Military Advocate General’s Corps at the time, Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Shamir-Borer, say that “the rules of engagement on the Gaza border were determined according to operational needs” and the High Court’s decision to reject the petitions “had no limiting effect on the rules.”
They say the rules of engagement at the time “proved effective,” and the military “successfully fulfilled its mission of preventing mass infiltrations into Israel and harm to civilians living nearby.”
“The court did not intervene in the rules of engagement implemented by the IDF on the ground,” the former officers say, adding that “just as the rules of engagement did not change before the petition to the High Court was filed or due to it, so too they did not change following the ruling.”
“The claims now being heard against the High Court are baseless. Beyond being an excuse not to establish a state commission of inquiry, they essentially express a rejection of the very concept of the rule of law,” they add.
The Times of Israel Community.