The Hannibal Directive, named after Hannibal – an ancient Carthaginian general who poisoned himself rather than be captured alive – is a war procedure adopted by the Israeli army, first implemented during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1986 and kept as a secretive military doctrine until 2003. This doctrine allows the Israeli army to kill its own citizens to stop resistance fighters from capturing Israeli soldiers who could be used as prisoner exchanges. According to the Hannibal Directive, “the kidnapping must be stopped by all means, even at the price of striking and harming our own forces”. As reported by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper on July 7, the Israeli army employed the Hannibal Directive multiple times on October 7, targeting Israelis detained by the Qassam Brigades.
According to Haaretz reports, the IDF bombed at least three military bases and outposts, which were entirely overrun by Qassam Brigades and other Palestinian armed factions on October 7. The IDF also heavily fired upon the fenced area dividing Gaza and Israel as Palestinian fighters returned to the strip with captured Israelis. The army also issued an order stating that “not a single vehicle can return to Gaza”, which killed the detained Israeli citizens and soldiers.
The testimony of an anonymous Israeli helicopter commander, published by Ynet news, the online outlet affiliated with Yedioth Ahronoth, also confirmed by the Electronic Intifada, revealed that the Apache helicopters indiscriminately fired at everything in the fenced area, targeting Palestinian fighters and Israelis alike. The commander of Squadron 190, Lieutenant Colonel A, instructed the Israeli pilots to “shoot at everything they see in the area of the fence”. At one point, the pilots also attacked an IDF station with trapped soldiers.
An investigation conducted by the United Nations revealed that Israeli tanks killed 13 Israeli detainees being held in a house in Kibbutz Beeri. According to the witnesses on the ground, the IDF launched a rocket-propelled grenade at the house. An Israeli general in charge of the Kibbutz told the soldiers: “Break in, even at the cost of civilian casualties”, who was later cleared of wrongdoing by an IDF investigation in April.
The obvious conclusion of the Hannibal Directive is that Israel killed many of its own people. The Palestinian military assault on October 7 was so successful that the Israel’s command and control units in the region was quickly eliminated, the communications infrastructure across the entire region was completely damaged until later in the day. The surprise attack by the Qassam Brigades put the IDF in desperate situations where the Israeli pilots had to use their own mobile phones to contact the local Israeli militias and senior officers in the area to obtain permissions for the commands. The Hannibal Directive was applied by the IDF to eliminate the possibility of a hostage deal at the cost of killing their own civilians.