A media report that Israel’s forces would use nerve gas against Hamas militants in the event of an invasion of Gaza has sparked a strong reaction online.
The unverified claims by the publication Middle East Eye come amid anticipation that Israel will enter Gaza after Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Thursday it had conducted a “targeted raid” in the north of the strip.
Israel has not launched its expected ground invasion of Gaza but said the raid was in “preparation for the next stages of combat” after the bombing of the strip, which local officials said has killed more than 6,500 people, Reuters reported.
It followed an attack by Hamas on southern Israel on October 7, which killed at least 1,400 people, most of whom were civilians, according to Reuters. Hamas has taken an estimated 200 hostages from 25 countries and has threatened to kill some of them.
Middle East Eye reported on Wednesday an alleged plan to rescue the captives. It said Palestinian resistance groups expect Israel to flood Hamas tunnels “with nerve gas and chemical weapons under the surveillance of US Delta Force commandos.”
Nerve gases of all kinds have been outlawed by both the Hague and Geneva Conventions.
Citing a “senior Arab source,” the publication said that “Israel and the U.S. hope to achieve the element of surprise in order to penetrate Hamas tunnels, rescue an estimated 220 hostages, and kill thousands of soldiers belonging to Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades.”
It said that the plan would see “internationally forbidden gases” pumped into tunnels in Gaza which are “capable of paralyzing the bodily movement” for up to 12 hours, during which the hostages can be rescued.
The publication said the source had got the information “from a leak originating in the U.S.,” which it could not independently verify.
Newsweek reached out to Middle East Eye for comment.
While some social media users expressed alarm at the alleged plan and shared the article, the claims were questioned by others. The Economist correspondent Gregg Carlstrom posted on X, formerly Twitter, that there were “some glaring factual errors” in the story, “and the ‘plan’ it describes isn’t even remotely plausible.”
Security expert Dan Kazseta posted on X that the report’s description of nerve gas “doesn’t pass any test at all. That’s simply not how any of this works. Not to mention the physics and mechanics of using chemical agents in tunnels that go on for miles.”
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They also rejected the original headline, which said that the attack would happen “under US Navy supervision” even though Delta Force is a special operations force of the United States Army.
The headline was later updated on Thursday to say the operation would happen “under US Army supervision.” When shared on X, there was a message from readers adding context that the information cannot be verified.
The United States has not committed any direct support for Israel in the war, although there are concerns that Washington could be drawn into a wider conflict as Iranian proxies step up attacks on American targets in the region.
Middle East Eye is a United Kingdom-based website founded in 2014 that has been accused of being backed by Qatar and showing bias towards the Muslim Brotherhood by the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain.
In 2017, the publication denied this, saying it is independent and not funded by any country of movement.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.