And yet the offensive in Gaza, which is said to be aimed at dismantling militant networks and preventing a repeat attack by Hamas, has no prospect of bringing any peace to Israelis or their neighbors. The war has dragged on with no end in sight, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now insists he wants to maintain the occupation of Gaza indefinitely.
The staggering number of Palestinian civilian casualties, which U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said exceeded 25,000 in late February, has prompted U.S. President Joe Biden to press Netanyahu for restraint and to ensure that Israel’s military operations comply with basic principles of just war and international law.
The Israeli military says it is doing everything in its power to minimize civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip, that it has sophisticated targeting procedures to ensure that any military strike is proportionate and does not kill too many civilians.
“Our military is the most moral in the world,” Oct. B. Netanyahu testified. But already in November, when pressed about the deaths of Palestinians, B. Netanyahu had to defend himself again: “Any civilian death is a tragedy. And we shouldn’t have them because we’re doing everything we can to keep civilians out of harm’s way… That’s what we’re trying to do: minimize civilian casualties.”
In fact, Israel does not, admits the country’s former soldier and Foreign Affairs expert Avner Gvaryahu.
The Israeli military is waging a brutal campaign in the Gaza Strip, he said, disregarding the protocols the armed forces are supposed to follow to minimize civilian casualties. But even these guidelines are not enough: an examination of previous campaigns in the Gaza Strip reveals the inadequacy of Israel’s targeting guidelines, which do not actually aim to reduce civilian casualties.
During the latest phase of fighting in Gaza, Israel did not comply with even these restrictions, causing untold damage and making a solution to the conflict even more difficult to achieve, says A. Gvaryahu.
It is based on 3 points
The wars of the past help to see through the fog of the present war. The Israeli veterans’ group “Breaking the Silence”, led by A. Gvaryahu, has spent several years researching the testimonies of soldiers from previous military campaigns in the Gaza Strip – in 2008-2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021. In all cases, Israel said it made every effort to avoid civilian casualties.
This claim was based on 3 claims: that Israel attacks only legitimate military targets and not civilian targets; that Israel operates on highly reliable intelligence that prevents harm to civilians; Israel carries out its attacks with precision, thus limiting damage to the civilian population.
The organization’s research into past wars has revealed many reasons to doubt each of these claims.
First, not all Israeli targets in past campaigns can be considered legitimate military targets. Although some of them certainly were, such as weapons depots, Hamas headquarters, tunnels used by Hamas operatives, and rocket launch sites. But Israel also struck a category of targets it called “homes of militants.” These were mostly civilian homes and apartments, which Israel believed were occupied by members of armed groups, usually Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Israel often razed entire buildings to the ground simply because Israeli officials marked one apartment in them as being used by militants. In such cases, neither the militants themselves nor anything that could reasonably be considered militant activities were targeted. According to the organization, in reality, the militants were probably not at home at the time of the attacks. And yet, for Israel, the mere fact that a militant lived there is enough to justify the destruction of the entire building.
in 2014 at the start of the operation, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said the strikes on the militants’ homes were a violation of international humanitarian law because they were civilian homes, not military targets. An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman later insisted that the militants’ homes were in fact Hamas headquarters” – just as they were in 2021, when Israeli forces bombed the homes of several Hamas members and destroyed several apartment buildings in Gaza. However, soldiers who spoke to Breaking the Silence explained that they were in fact simple residential buildings and not centers of militant operations.
Israel’s warped targeting rationale ultimately results in the destruction of an entire building just to reach one apartment, endangering dozens of civilians who have nothing to do with the fighting.
Intelligence
These reckless methods are further complicated by misinformation. Israeli intelligence turned out to be very unreliable, writes A. Gvaryahu.
Among major operations, Israeli intelligence officials are investigating the Gaza Strip and assessing whether a particular location could be considered an enemy target. After identifying a likely target, they prepare “collateral damage estimates”—calculating how many non-combatants should be killed in an attack based on the density of the civilian population, the specific weapon the IDF will use, and the type of target. Based on these assessments, IDF officers conduct a proportionality assessment during a conflict, which determines whether the military significance of a target is proportionate to the likely harm to the civilian population.
Israel has waged a brutal campaign in the Gaza Strip in partial compliance with the protocols its armed forces are expected to follow. One of the problems with this methodology is that the intelligence available to Israeli officials is often very limited, for example the IDF may identify an area as an ammunition depot, but not know what type or quantity of ammunition is stored there.
For example, the military value of 50 hand grenades is much less than 50 rockets that can be launched into Israeli cities. With such limited information, the military significance of the target cannot be fully determined, and Israeli forces cannot make a reliable assessment of proportionality. In addition, intelligence can quickly become outdated and is not updated often enough by Israeli officials. The purpose of a specific building can change, as can its surroundings.
A new school may be built nearby or the purpose of the facility may be changed. During large-scale conflicts, and even more so during the current war, Israel warns entire neighborhoods to evacuate, dramatically altering the population density and everyday life in those and other neighborhoods. In such circumstances, ex ante estimates of collateral damage become particularly questionable and cannot be used to assess proportionality.
Even in cases where intelligence may be reliable, Israeli airstrikes procedures do not prioritize the safety of civilians. During previous military campaigns, the need to carry out more strikes at a faster pace led the IDF to give lower-ranking officers the authority to approve strikes that could cause significant collateral damage to the civilian population. In this way, the military reduced the priority of avoiding civilian casualties.
Hit rate is also increased by a new artificial intelligence system that generates new potential targets. A system designed for mass-targeting inevitably reduces accuracy and increases civilian casualties, as evidenced by the death toll in the Gaza Strip in recent months.
In previous campaigns, Israel tried in some way to minimize civilian casualties. He used the so-called “rooftop-smashing” tactic, in which a small rocket is fired at the roof of a building to warn residents that a stronger Israeli strike is coming. Of course, the IDF did not use this method of warning when the intended target was inside a building – it considered the likely death of civilians as legitimate collateral damage. The IDF uses rooftops only when it seeks to attack the structure itself, and does not consider the people inside to be collateral damage.
But even when she uses rooftops, civilians are still killed. Israeli officials often do not have clear information about the number of residents of a particular building and do not always try to find it. One soldier explained that while Israel has the technology to verify the exact location of residents (by tracking their phones), it does so very rarely because such a procedure would require too much time and resources and would inevitably slow down the pace of airstrikes. Despite the warning shock, many people may not be able to leave the building or be unable to leave it in time, for example if they are sick or elderly.
Sometimes people mistake the warning rocket for the attack itself, or think it’s a bomb that fell nearby, and don’t leave the house.
During the current war, Israel has significantly reduced the use of demolitions. The reduced use of roof-stabbing is an acknowledgment by the IDF that it is now taking less care than in the past to avoid civilian casualties.
