Calling Israel’s bombing of Gaza an illegitimate military offensive, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has slammed the Netanyahu government for committing “war crimes” that are turning the occupied Palestinian territory into a humanitarian disaster area.

In an unusually harsh op-ed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the former head of the Israeli government (2006-09) said Tel Aviv is waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning, and with no chances of success.

A number of politicians and former generals from Israel oppose the war in which Tel Aviv has dropped 70 kilo-tonnes of ammunition across Gaza, equivalent to six Hiroshima-level bombs.

Until recently, Olmert insisted that Israel was not committing war crimes in Gaza, and that no government official would ever give orders to indiscriminately kill Palestinians. But he changed tack amid the ‘unjustified’ and ‘unacceptable’ killings of innocent Palestinians in a ‘vicious war’.

“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians… it's the result of government policy – knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes,” he said.

Olmert said the war should have ended by early 2024. Yet it has continued without justification, and with no political vision for the future of Gaza. The Israeli military has acted “rashly, incautiously, over-aggressively” while showing carelessness and indifference towards Palestinian victims.

While the public opinion in many countries has been decisively against Israel since October 2023, some of its staunch allies among Western governments have dialled down their support for Tel Aviv in recent weeks.

Leaders of the UK, France and Canada released a joint statement last week, calling Israel’s escalation in Gaza “wholly disproportionate”. They threatened concrete actions against Israel if it did not stop its renewed offensive and lift aid restrictions.

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Thousands of children face acute starvation in the war-ravaged Gaza as Israel has banned for nearly three months all food and medicine from reaching 2.3 million Palestinians facing nonstop bombing for 20 months.

It allowed only a small number of aid trucks to enter the territory earlier this week as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu feared international allies would withdraw support over “images of hunger”.

But for many, it’s too little, too late. UN officials described the small volume of aid allowed into Gaza by Israel as “a drop in the ocean”. UNICEF reported last week 71,000 children and more than 17,000 mothers in Gaza needed urgent treatment for acute malnutrition.

Olmert said the Netanyahu government is “actively, unhesitatingly and with malice aforethought” pursuing a policy of starvation in Gaza.

“Yes, we've been denying Gazans food, medicine and basic living needs as part of an explicit policy. Netanyahu, typically, is trying to blur the type of orders he's been giving, in order to evade legal and criminal responsibility in due course,” he said.

The former Israeli prime minister also referred to the “slaughtering (of) Palestinian civilians in the (occupied) West Bank”. Olmert said the police and military units deployed in the area are turning a blind eye to the heinous crimes being perpetrated daily in the Palestinian territory.

“It is time to halt, before we are all banished from the family of nations and are summoned to the International Criminal Court for war crimes, with no good defence. Enough is enough.”