Israel’s military has opened an inquiry into how a uniformed 70-year-old researcher was found dead in a south Lebanon combat zone.
Zeev Erlich, a keen researcher of archaeology and columnist for a right-wing newspaper, was killed on Wednesday “in combat” which also saw the death of a 20-year-old non-commissioned officer, the military said in a statement.
It said later he had been a reservist.
A statement from the military on Thursday said: “The military police have opened an inquiry into the circumstances of the incident in which reserve commander Zeev (Jabo) Hanoch Erlich was taken onto the battlefield where he met his death.”
Military radio said preliminary investigation had uncovered a “breach of protocol”, and that Erlich had entered Lebanon “without the necessary authorisation”.
A photograph of a helmeted, smiling and glasses-wearing Erlich with a bushy white moustache made the front pages of several dailies, which asked what he was doing in the ruins of the citadel in Chamaa, several kilometres (miles) north of Lebanon’s demarcation line with Israel.
An expert on the Israeli right told news agency AFP Erlich may have been trying to “demonstrate that this area was inhabited by the Hebrews or Jews in the past”, with the aim of claiming Israel’s right to it, but that this “is a minority view”.
The Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, called Erlich a “pioneer of research in geography, archaeology and Jewish history of Judea and Samaria” — as Israel calls the West Bank it occupied in 1967.
He lived in Ofra, one of the first settlements in the area.
Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right settler, praised the “love and passion” for “the secrets… of the land of Israel” of Erlich, who was largely unknown outside nationalist circles.
