\n<\/p>\n
The international laws governing war<\/a> are unfeeling. They give more precedence to military advantage<\/a> than to civilian harm. They do not consider comparative numbers of dead or wounded. They ask commanders in the field to judge, often very quickly, the military advantage of an attack, the nature of the threat they face, what means they possess to counter it and what feasible measures they can take to reduce the expected damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure.<\/p>\n That complicated calculus, known as \u201cproportionality,\u201d is deeply flawed, lawyers say, because it balances essentially incompatible things. And each attack must be judged separately, to decide if it is within the boundaries of a legal act of war.<\/p>\n \u201cThe law of war is cold,\u201d said Emanuela-Chiara Gillard, an associate fellow at Chatham House, the London think tank, who previously worked as a lawyer for the Red Cross and the United Nations. It does not, she added, \u201caddress our concerns and moral outrage over civilian death.\u201d<\/p>\n After Hamas invaded Israel and killed some 1,200 people, Israel retaliated in force. But the televised images of devastation in Gaza and the large asymmetry in deaths, especially of civilians<\/a>, have created an uproar in the Arab world and parts of the West.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But in war, symmetry and proportionality are unrelated.<\/p>\n Proportionality is a key component in determining the legality of an act of war. It is not merely a question, lawyers said, of fairly balancing the death tolls on either side of a conflict\u2019s ledger. Instead, it is a matter of determining whether, at the moment the decision to launch any attack is made, the expected military advantage outweighs the expected harm to civilians once feasible measures are taken to reduce it.<\/p>\n But there is no universal consensus on how to make such a comparison. Nor are the facts always clear in the fog of war.<\/p>\n There have been criticism and questions, for example, about Israeli attacks near or on hospitals and schools. Were the buildings really used for military purposes, and were proper warnings given before an attack? Has Israel done enough to protect civilians?<\/p>\n A plethora of diplomats, United Nations officials and human rights groups have argued that the answer is \u2018no,\u2019 and some have called for investigations into possible war crimes and even used the word genocide.<\/p>\n But civilian deaths are a political question, not a legal one, said Daniel Reisner, a former head of the Israeli army\u2019s international law division. \u201cThe numbers of dead on both sides are tragic, but if you limit the discussion to legality, the numbers are not the thing you measure. It\u2019s why they died and in what circumstances they died, not how many of them died.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Still, the numbers on either side of the conflict stagger.<\/p>\n Israel says about 1,200 people were killed and another 240 taken hostage in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terrorist attacks. As of today, the war has killed over 15,000 Palestinians, and perhaps thousands more, many of them women and children, in Hamas-controlled Gaza, according to health officials there. (The Gaza health ministry does not count Hamas fighters separately from civilians when providing death tolls.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The large numbers of civilian dead, more than in any previous Gaza conflict, do in aggregate raise questions about whether Israel\u2019s calculations of proportionality have changed in this war.<\/p>\n There are questions around certain attacks, like two days of bombing<\/a> in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 that collapsed a large number of residential buildings and killed 195 people, according Gaza health officials.<\/p>\n Israel said that it had warned residents to leave and that its targets were legitimate: Ibrahim Biari, commander of the Central Jabaliya Battalion, who helped plan the Oct. 7 attacks and was overseeing the fighting, and Muhammad Asar, said to be the commander of Hamas\u2019s anti-tank missile unit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, said that Mr. Biari was commanding a large Hamas unit using an extensive tunnel system under the camp\u2019s buildings, which Israel also targeted, and that \u201cscores\u201d of Hamas fighters had been killed. Israeli officials suggested that the tunnel network had undermined the stability of the foundations, and that the bombs and secondary explosions had brought down the residential buildings. But did Israel take that fully into account?<\/p>\n Israeli security officials insist that their standards of proportionality have remained constant in this conflict. There are lawyers, they say, in nearly every military unit on call 24\/7, reviewing the legality of each strike. Often in real time, the lawyers provide advice to commanders about the legality of targets and the weapons to be used. They also assess the army\u2019s efforts to warn civilians and the estimated harm to noncombatants. If the lawyers deem a strike unlawful, field commanders must cancel it.<\/p>\n But Israeli officials, speaking anonymously under military rules, acknowledge that the scale and scope of the operations in Gaza are much greater than in the past. Targets that would have not been considered valuable enough to justify the risk to civilians in less serious skirmishes are being hit now, they said. Those include both private residences and public structures, like the Gaza Parliament and the Islamic University.<\/p>\n Israeli military officials are frustrated that critics do not see that this war is being waged to ensure Israel\u2019s existence, but fought within the letter of international law.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is different,\u201d said Pnina Sharvit Baruch, who previously led the Israeli army\u2019s international law department. \u201cHamas is open in aiming to destroy the state of Israel and any peaceful resolution of the conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As in 1948 when Israel, soon after its founding, was attacked by its Arab neighbors, she said, \u201cour existence is at stake, and we are fighting here for our lives, for our future, for the ability to stay here.\u201d<\/p>\n The officials complain that the world\u2019s view is one-sided. They accuse Hamas of deliberately increasing civilian casualties \u2014 and exploiting Israel\u2019s efforts to respect the law \u2014 by using civilian sites like hospitals<\/a> to launch strikes and hide fighters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n