Palestinian fighters are unlawful combatants, so they are not protected under international law.

"Unlawful combatant" is not a recognized category under international law. It is an imperial construct that arose following the United States's so-called "war on terror" to create legal loopholes and evade legal responsibilities. Under international humanitarian law, there are only two categories: combatants and civilians, both of whom are protected by law. By designating Palestinian fighters as "unlawful combatants," Israel seeks to deny them protections afforded under international law and frame them as terrorists rather than freedom fighters engaged in an anti-colonial struggle with a recognized right to resist.

One purpose of the "unlawful combatant" designation is to circumvent the legal protections afforded to Palestinian prisoners and detainees under international law. To this end, Israel enacted the Unlawful Combatants Law in 2002, creating a third category of detainee that is afforded neither prisoner-of-war nor civilian protections. The law permits the military to detain Palestinians indefinitely until the end of hostilities based on the presumption that they may pose a security threat. Following October 2023, Israel further expanded these powers by delaying judicial review, and weakening due process protections. Over 3,436 Palestinians in Gaza were held under this law during the genocide. Israeli officials themselves acknowledged that over 90% of those detained under this system were civilians. UN bodies and human rights organizations have documented that Palestinians detained under this regime have been subjected to widespread torture, sexual violence, rape, enforced disappearance, and dozens of deaths in custody under inhumane conditions.

Another function of the "unlawful combatant" label is to justify Israel's systematic attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure under the pretext of targeting combatants. Yet even where combatants are present, international humanitarian law prohibits attacks on civilians and civilian objects and requires respect for the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution. Israel has violated each of these through the repeated use of 2,000-pound bombs in one of the world's most densely populated areas, turning hospital courtyards into mass graves, transforming aid distribution sites into death traps, and burning displaced civilians in the very places they were instructed to flee to for their "safety."

Since 2007, Israel has officially declared Gaza a "hostile territory." Since 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 more than 75,00000522-4/fulltext) Palestinians, the destruction of most of Gaza, and the engineering of famine, it illustrates that the "unlawful combatant" designation functions as a tool for legitimizing genocide.