How Israeli Lawyers Vet Bombing Targets

This past week, I was in Israel with a group of lawyers from the US, Canada, Bulgaria, and Latvia on a trip sponsored by the nonpartisan Center for Jewish Impact. CJI's general goal is to serve as a conduit between the Israeli private sector and domestic and foreign governments, but it has also run this trip and one before it to give interested "legal elites" more insight into the post-10/7 political and military landscape in Israel. I will probably have more to say about the trip later, but for now I thought I would share what I learned from a presentation from an Israeli military lawyer.

I have heard countless times since 10/7 that Israel has bombed Gaza "indiscriminately" or as "revenge." In fact, every single target has to be approved by Israeli military lawyers, who vet the target to ensure that it meets the international law standards for proportionality.

Several things stand out about how Israel approaches this matter. First, the military lawyers don't just give general advice about proportionality and then let the commanders in the field decide how to stay within its constraints. As noted, they literally vet every target, except of course when ground forces are under direct attack and need to call in immediate air support. Even then, local commanders are obligated, if time allows, to get approval from higher-ups who have more training in international law.

Second, Israel's military lawyers, unlike the US's lawyers, report only to other military lawyers, not to the general chain of command, so they can't be pressured by commanders who find the rules of engagement problematic or excessive.

Third, Israel's rules of engagement are stricter than NATO's. Israel can afford to be so strict because it has such a strong military advantage over Hamas. Otherwise, many of the rules that Israel's military lawyers require, so as making phone calls and dropping leaflets to warn residents to flee in advance of Israeli military action would be suicidal, given that Israel thus gives up the element of surprise. Relatedly, having spoken to other Israeli military lawyers over the years, it's clear that they believe that their mission is not simply to get the IDF to obey international law, but to so exceed international law that even  international tribunals that are highly biased against Israel will have a difficult time claiming systematic war crimes by the IDF.

That said, I recognize an obvious constraint on the lawyers' ability to ensure that the military complies with the rules. Local commanders can falsely claim exigency to avoid the process. Unless a commander does so consistently and somewhat egregiously, it's unlikely he will be caught. But there is no military in the world that has figured out how to ensure 100% compliance with the rules of engagement. (On a related note, I was curious what percentage of soldiers in a typical conflict engage in illegal actions. According to academic papers on the subject, about 8-10% of soldiers in a Western army will do something illegal during a war, and 1-3% will engage in serious illegal conduct. Even if Israel managed to cut those figures by 75%, with 200K soldiers serving in Gaza, that leaves room for a great deal of illegal conduct.)

In any event, the military lawyer who spoke to us provided a slide, translated from the Hebrew, showing the complex process required for approving an air strike.

The obvious question that may come to mind is that if the targeting is so precise, why has there been so much destruction of Gaza's infrastructure. And the answer is that Hamas's vast tunnel network had entrances and exits just everywhere, and Israeli ground forces couldn't operate safely if Hamas combatants could pop out of a tunnel any time, any place. So the tunnels had to be neutralized, and the only way to neutralize a tunnel below ground was first destroy the building on top of it. Hamas's use of civilian infrastructure in this manner was both immoral and illegal, and promising solutions like flooding the tunnels were ultimately untenable.

Comments

[Krenn]

Call me crazy, but if Israeli lawyers KNOW that they're demanding mitigation efforts in excess of what the law requires, but they get away with doing it ANYWAY, at the direction of their bespoke lawyer-only chain-of-command, that rises some serious legal issues about who's 'really' in charge of the military chain of command, there.

From a certain point of view, 'forcing' your client to do more than he actually needs to do, because it will better accord with your policies as his lawyer, but not with anyone else's policies, seems like it should be some sort of crime or disbarment offense.

[John 4]

“Yeah, we blow up a lot of civilians in these buildings, but think of the tunnels!”

Come on, man. This is ghoulish.

[David Bernstein]

The process requires an assessment of how many civilians may be killed, and the lawyers often require them to get the building evacuated or sometimes to call of the proposed strike. Yes, some civilians will be killed regardless. Saying "you can't fight a war in an urban environment used by terrorists if civilians will be killed" means (a) that you can't fight a war which means (b) you are giving militaries every incentive to embed themselves in civilian areas, to dissuade the other side from attacking. Of course, once a country's survival is at stake (as Israel's was post-10/7), it will attack regardless, causing more civilian harm than if you didn't come up with the ridiculous "no civilians get harmed" standard to begin with. Meanwhile, what would have been your strategy to neutralize the tunnels?

[David Bernstein]

Put another way "don't take that hill, don't take that bridge, don't take the high ground, don't cross that river, etc, civilians may be killed" is not the way anyone fights a war, nor could they.

[Alan Vanneman]

According to Statista, as summarized by Copilot

• Around 70% of all structures in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged since October 2023.
• 92% of housing stock is damaged or destroyed, leaving most households uninhabitable.
• The road network, commercial/industrial facilities, and schools have also suffered widespread destruction.
Healthcare Collapse
• Over half of medical facilities are closed.
• Those still operating (hospitals, field hospitals, primary care centers) are only partially functional.
• This has severely limited the ability to treat war-related injuries and preventable conditions.
Water & Agriculture
• 58% of households face water insecurity and report worsening water quality.
• Croplands, agricultural wells, and greenhouses have been heavily damaged.
• Gaza’s fishing fleet has been destroyed, further undermining food security.
•
Education
• A large share of schools have been destroyed or severely damaged, disrupting education for children.
Humanitarian Impact
• As of June 2025, at least 55,000 Gazans killed directly by conflict-related trauma.
• Infrastructure destruction has contributed to thousands more preventable deaths due to lack of housing, healthcare, food, and clean water.
• The situation is described as one of the largest man-made humanitarian disasters in recent decades.

[David Bernstein]

All because Hamas started a war and refused to surrender even long after it became clear that it could not hope to win a military victory. But it was clever enough to understand that the more devastation it invited by entrenching itself ever deeper within population centers, the more it could count on rubes to blame Israel, regardless of what Israel did. Consider the stats you just recounted (even allowing for the fact that casualty stats always ultimately come from Hamas's "Ministry of Health"). If Israel hadn't taken all sorts of precautionary measures plus facilitated humanitarian aid despite Hamas being a huge beneficiary of the aid, that level of physical destruction would have led to at least ten times the number of deaths.

[Estragon]

Everyone always talks about the 55k we killed, rather than the 550k we didn’t. So unfair!

[Swede425]

Wow.
Looks like Hamas should have surrendered.
Seems they don't care about any of that.
Weird.

[Please, Daivd, Seek Help]

Isn't there some tension between "the bombing is not indiscriminate" and "the bombing is indiscriminate but it's Hamas' fault that the entire territory is effectively a military base"?

This maybe speaks as a broader rebuttal to the piece -- the critics you are responding to already know that the Israeli military is bureaucratized; they just disagree that bureaucratic process absolves responsibility for outcomes when the outcomes are so devastating.

[Martinned2]

So what you're telling me is that the IDF didn't kill tens of thousands of civilians by accident, but that it killed tens of thousands of civilians after careful deliberation? And that's somehow better?

[Estragon]

They could have killed 10x more, you see, so actually they should get a lot of credit!

[Drewski]

Even Hamas isn't claiming tens of thousands of civilians. Congratulations, you hold more extreme beliefs than Hamas and win the "I hate Jews" competition this week.