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JERUSALEM, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Israel's military Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot said on Wednesday that Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip in 2014 was "disproportionate."
"The Israel Defense Forces employ a policy of using aggressive and disproportionate force to prevent situations in which they fire rockets at us and we return shells," Eisenkot told a Knesset committee.
He said Israel will continue to react "proportionally" to any rocket fire.
"For us, there is one address in the strip: Hamas," he said. Hamas is a Palestinian Islamist organization that controls the besieged enclave.
On July 8, 2014, Israel launched a 51-day-long military campaign in Gaza, citing rocket fire from the strip. The war claimed the lives of at least 2,251 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 67 Israeli soldiers, five civilians and a Thai civilian.
