Myth: Israel’s response to Palestinian attacks is disproportionate

Myth

The accusation focuses on the alleged disproportionality of Israel’s response to Palestinian attacks, positing an exaggerated number of Palestinian casualties compared to the number of Israeli casualties caused initially.

Putting it in Context

By Alessandro Verdoliva

Fact:

 Two considerations must be made regardless of the validity of the accusation.

First, the legal and military context is not considered: disproportionality, speaking in broad terms, did not exist from the outset. Indeed, the issue of proportionality was never raised when Arab factions declared war on Israel in a ratio of 11:1, contravening the most basic principles of the fledgling UN Charter on the use of force (prohibition of the threat or use of force under Article 2, paragraph 4).

Second, the recurrence of attacks is not considered, which have been incessant against the Jewish community since before 1948 to the present day. Therefore, we are dealing with a heterogeneous faction that aggresses and promotes the use of violence incessantly for almost a century against Israel and its civilians (it is worth noting that when Arab factions captured Jewish settlements, they wiped out the civilian population).

Given this fundamental premise to provide an idea of the context, we must focus on proportionality. Let us specify the public opinion’s accusation: an excessive number of civilian deaths compared to the harm suffered by Israel, thus:

1) A ratio between the casualties of the two factions observing how this ratio is

2) Heterogeneous as the foundation of the accusation.

To support this thesis, international law governing the proportionality of war is invoked.

Speaking in logical terms, what should be proportional? How is proportionality measured?

A)  The mathematical interpretation whereby the dead must be in a 1:1 ratio

 If we take as true the interpretation that a given number of deaths suffered can be matched by an equal number of victims on the other side, then what would be the difference with retaliatory logic? This interpretation borders on an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, insofar as it requires “balancing the dead,” completely disregarding the context according to which war has a political objective and as such must achieve results, not casualties.

According to this interpretation, if Israel had carried out operations aimed at deliberately targeting 816 Palestinian civilians, 59 Palestinian police officers, and 382 Palestinian military personnel (the same number of casualties suffered) and had seized and kidnapped 253 Palestinians, the requirement of proportionality would have been satisfied. I don’t think the military and moral implications of this interpretation deserve comment.

B)   The technological interpretation whereby military means must be equated

If we take this interpretation as true, which places technological disparity at its center, a situation would be created whereby, once again, the causes of the conflict would be decontextualized, implicitly rewarding the less technologically advanced faction and obliging the more advanced faction to use less sophisticated military tools for compassionate reasons toward the aggressor who, unfortunately, does not enjoy the same technological standards. Here is a first paradox: firstly, it logically makes no sense in itself as it would result in an implicit and automatic condemnation of the more developed actor for being developed, and secondly, the greater paradox is a true boomerang for the supporters of this interpretation; if indeed Israel were to choose not to avail itself of its technological supremacy and use less sophisticated weapons to approach the opponent’s standards, then Palestinian civilian casualties would be incredibly higher. The technological gap in favor of Israel is a boon for the Palestinian population and not a detriment, as its particularly expensive armaments reduce (without unfortunately eliminating) collateral damage, i.e., civilian casualties. If Israel were to use rudimentary Qassam missiles instead of costly AGMs, Tel Aviv would certainly save a lot in economic terms and would also satisfy the condition of technological proportionality, but obviously civilian deaths would increase.

C)  The absolute interpretation of proportionality

If proportionality were instead understood in absolute terms by combining both points A and B, i.e., combining both the numerical square proportionality of point A and the technological proportionality of point B, to the October 7 attack, Israel would have had to respond in an equal numerical manner in terms of victims, in terms of the type of victims, and in terms of military modality. We would have therefore witnessed the Israeli army entering Gaza armed with sabers, grenades, and we would have seen them enter people’s homes beheading civilians with shovels, putting children in microwaves to cook them alive, setting fire to the elderly, shooting domestic animals, and raping Palestinian women. Like the other points, these derivations and baselessness of collective intellect do not deserve any kind of further investigation.

Fortunately, these are not the parameters of proportionality adopted by international law; however, it has been deemed necessary to shed light on these three points because these three interpretations have taken root with particular force in public opinion, and their resonance and diffusion are as wide and vast as the abyss of the brains that gave birth to them.

Legally, true proportionality, i.e., the objective criterion on which one must rely and not that of public opinion, is enshrined in a triangulation of factors so ordered.

Summary: the infringement of the legal good given by the threat or the actual attack suffered by the defending State must be commensurate with the defensive military response, and this must not exceed beyond military purposes as this would result in civilian casualties not useful for achieving military objectives.

To put it more simply, the criterion of proportionality does not consider in any way the ratio between the number of casualties of one faction and the other but implies that the defensive military reaction of the defending State is in line with the principles of just war (enshrined in the UN Charter based on the principle of self-defense of States) and that these military operations have a non-civilian objective, and therefore, proportionality is exceeded when indiscriminate hostile operations are conducted solely for punitive purposes. The proportionality ratio must therefore be understood between the objective importance of the military target given by the extent of the threat (compelling element) and the means used, which must cause as little suffering as possible to the civilian population: there is no number of victims beyond which one cannot go.

Obviously, in the case of Israel, these conditions are met with an equally enormous number of Palestinian civilians. Why is that? International law does not and cannot set a limit on the number of civilian casualties in absolute terms, otherwise it would fall into the barbaric paradoxes listed in points A, B, and C. Therefore, there is legally no maximum number. This number of victims that we see today is objectively high, but this does not affect the condition of proportionality as they are collateral victims in a context of urban warfare where the objectives are exclusively military and never civilian, with the problem, however, that military objectives are deliberately mixed with the civilian population by explicit strategy of the Hamas government. If a ceteris paribus ratio is made, in fact, the siege of Gaza appears to be the one with the least incidence of [collateral effects on military targets] compared to any other urban warfare scenario in recent decades. This further confirms Israeli compliance with international humanitarian law. This comparison is very simple given the recent tragic events: just look at the conditions of cities and civilian populations in Ukraine following their respective urban warfare. It is reiterated: if Israel’s purpose were to bomb disproportionately, it would be much more efficient and less expensive to simply launch a massive carpet bombing campaign, without bothering to carry out roof-knocking (missile technique that anticipates the actual bombing by giving an acoustic announcement allowing the evacuation of civilians), without aerial leafleting indicating where the attacks will take place (thus nullifying the element of surprise), without bothering to create corridors to move the civilian population (which slows down military operations), and without allowing UN humanitarian convoys to enter. Let us remember that Israel lacks neither atomic weapons nor non- intelligent bombs with very high destructive impact.