Eight Takeaways: How Israel Weakened Civilian Protections When Bombing Gaza

An investigation by The New York Times has found that Israel, in the weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, severely undermined its system of safeguards to make it easier to strike Gaza, and used flawed methods to find targets and assess the risk to civilians.

The Israeli military acknowledged changes to its rules of engagement but said they were made in the context of an unprecedented military threat and always complied with the laws of war.

Here are some of the main takeaways from the investigation.

Raised threshold of civilian harm per pre-emptive strike

In previous conflicts with Hamas, Israeli officers were usually only allowed to endanger fewer than 10 civilians in a given strike. In many cases the limit was five, or even zero.

At the start of this war, the Israeli military increased that threshold to 20, before reducing it in certain contexts a month later. Strikes that could harm more than 100 civilians would also be permitted on a case-by-case basis.

Expanded list of targets

Israel vastly increased the number of military targets that it proactively sought to strike. Officers could now pursue not only the smaller pool of senior Hamas commanders, arms depots and rocket launchers that were the focus of earlier campaigns, but also thousands of low-ranking fighters as well as those indirectly involved in military matters.

Removed limits on how many civilians could be put at risk each day

The military leadership briefly ordered that its forces could cumulatively risk killing up to 500 civilians a day in preplanned strikes. Two days later, even this limit was lifted, allowing officers to conduct as many strikes as they deemed lawful.

Struck too fast to vet all targets properly

The pace of the bombing campaign was one of the most intense in 21st-century warfare, which officers said made it far harder to vet targets properly. Israel dropped or fired nearly 30,000 munitions into Gaza in the first seven weeks, at least 30 times more than the U.S.-led coalition fired in the first seven weeks of its bombing campaign against ISIS.

Used a simplistic risk assessment

Israel often used a simplistic statistical model to assess the risk of civilian harm: It regularly estimated the number of civilians in a building where a target was believed to be hiding by using a formula based largely on the level of cellphone usage in the surrounding neighborhood.

Dropped large, inaccurate bombs

In previous wars, the air force would often use a “roof knock,” a smaller munition to give civilians some time to flee an imminent attack. From the first day of this war, Israel significantly reduced its use of roof knocks. The military also sometimes used less-accurate “dumb bombs,” as well as 2,000-pound bombs.

Used AI to propose targets

Israel used an artificial intelligence system in a widespread way for the first time. It helped officers analyze and sign off on targets exponentially more quickly, increasing the number of targets that officers could propose each day.

Delayed strikes

Hours often passed between when an officer vetted a target and when the air force launched a strike at him. This meant strikes often relied on outdated intelligence.