Civilian casualties are unfortunate but unavoidable collateral damage.

Applying the principle of collateral damage to Palestine assumes this is an ordinary war in which civilian deaths are incidental to legitimate military objectives. In reality, Israel is a settler-colonial regime whose very objective is the elimination of the Palestinian people through illegal occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and now genocide.

In just two years of its genocide on Gaza, Israel has killed or injured more than 50,000 Palestinian children in Gaza, killed around 1,700 health workers and over 400 aid workers, and made Gaza the deadliest place in modern history for journalists. Civilian destruction on this scale is not an unfortunate side effect; it is a defining feature of genocide.

The logic of "collateral damage" assumes civilian deaths are incidental. They are not. Israel has the fifteenth most powerful military in the world, equipped with precision-guided weapons and sophisticated intelligence capabilities. When Israel bombs a hospital, school, or tent camp, it knows what it is targeting. Israeli war crimes are executed with data-driven precision.

Under international humanitarian law, collateral damage can only be justified where the principle of proportionality is respected, meaning civilian harm must never be excessive relative to the anticipated military advantage. Israel has turned hospital courtyards into mass graves, transformed aid distribution sites into death traps, and burned displaced civilians in the very places they were instructed to flee to for their "safety." This systematic destruction of civilian life is not collateral damage. It is policy.

Since 2007, Israel has officially declared Gaza a "hostile territory." During the genocide, senior officials have declared that "we are fighting human animals," that "it is an entire nation out there that is responsible," and that "the emphasis is on damage, not precision." When such dehumanizing rhetoric is followed by the killing of 75,00000522-4/fulltext) Palestinians, it reveals genocidal intent, not accidental collateral damage.

Civilian devastation is embedded within the Israeli military doctrine itself. The Dahiya Doctrine calls for disproportionate force and the destruction of civilian areas. After the 2006 aggression on Lebanon, which killed 1,000 civilians, an Israeli military commander declared: "What happened in the Dahiya ..will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on...We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. These are not civilian villages, they are military bases." The doctrine has since been applied in Gaza in 2008-09, 2014, and now in the genocide.

The deliberate Israeli killing of civilians is not a matter of speculation. Senior Israeli officials are wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including intentionally directing attacks against civilians, starvation as a method of warfare, murder, and persecution. Israel further faces genocide proceedings before the International Court of Justice, more than 1,000 UN resolutions documenting systemic violations of international law, and condemnation by major international and Israeli human rights organizations for systematic attacks on civilians. The evidence is overwhelming and cumulative.

A 2023 U.S. intelligence assessment found that nearly half of Israeli munitions dropped on Gaza in the first month of the genocide were imprecise, unguided bombs. Israel's choice to use foreseeably indiscriminate weapons in one of the world's most densely populated areas reveals that Israel effectively treats civilians as targets.