The Gaza Fighting: Did Israel Shift Risk from Its Soldiers to Civilians?

What is it about?

This paper addresses the controversy between the Government of Israel and civil rights organizations and the United Nations about whether Israel followed the same pattern of many Western armies engaged in urban warfare in its campaigns against the Gaza Strip by transferring the risk of life away from its own soldiers to enemy civilians. By analyzing three campaigns Israel launched against Gaza between 2006 and 2014, I argue that Israel has indeed shifted the risk by using excessive lethality with relatively limited distinction between combatants and noncombatants. This argument relies on analyzing multiple combinations of fatality ratios whose trends are implicitly agreed upon by both Israel and its critics, and on the extent to which these ratios are mirrored in practices on the ground.

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