Beyond Proportionality: Israel's Just War in Gaza

Summary

Imagine a war without battlefields. There are no uniforms. Civilians and combatants are indistinguishable. Homes, schools, hospitals, and religious buildings are used as command and communication centers, and for the warehousing of weapons. Apartment rooftops are launching pads; the civilians who live inside . . . human shields. There are over 300 miles of reinforced tunnels, all outfitted with weapons and passageways for terrorists to take hostages and travel freely.

Beyond Proportionality examines Israel's battles against Hamas and Hezbollah under the laws of war and concludes that its wartime conduct was based on military necessity and fought justly. The targets are terrorists, weapons, and tunnels—not civilians. Israel relies upon verifiable intelligence, deploys precise weapons, and endangers its own soldiers in order to minimize civilian death.

The bombings over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden, and the urban warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, produced large numbers of civilian dead that were not considered acts of genocide; the war in Gaza was no different.