1. Jacob Levine
A Tactical Choice: Reducing Civilian Deaths in Israeli Raids
Without question, the Israeli military operates in the Palestinian territories outside explicit
operations. These actions are low key but remain controversial for both their reasons and the damage
the military raids do. This paper is not here to discuss reasons and accepts that Israelis do operate in the
territories as a military force. Instead it asks what tactics are needed to reduce civilian damage in these
combats. To answer this though, it must first be asked what causes Israel to start action. According to
B'Tselem, regulations allow soldiers to assassinate targets who were hostile to Israel.1
In addition,
Israelis conduct arrest raids in the territories to remove particular persons. These are not the only events
where Israelis fire, but they are both events where officers have the ability to plan how, where and
when to strike. With that luxury, officers can take into consideration how to limit collateral damage; it
allows for complete premeditation in location and method so long as the habits of the target are known.
Then the question can be what methods bring about the least collateral damage. That is a question that
statistics can be found for.
Two choices will be looked at, when and how. The possible locations are divided into two possibilities,
home and vehicle. When a death is at or near home in B'Tseem notes, it is given a 1 for the home
variable. Likewise when the notes mention a vehicle, the vehicle variable takes a 1. These are mutually
exclusive and an event may not be included in either. Dirty war indexes can then be made. Since
Operation Cast lead, 91 deaths at home and 82 in vehicles have happened out of 544 total deaths2
. The
dirty war index for home deaths and vehicle deaths are 68 and 15 respectively. The simple comparison
suggests that attacks at homes cause far more collateral damage than those on vehicles. A case can
easily be made to explain this as you are far more likely to find a wanted man's civilian family at home
while in a car he is more likely to be with militant associates if anyone.
Table 1
A humanitarian minded officer might think to stop hitting homes completely and wait for
targets to take wheels. That suggestion takes away weapon choice as a factor, something military has
wide choice over. The most common weapons used against both selected targets are rifle bullets and
aircraft missiles. The dirty war index can be further narrowed by adding binary variables for weapons.
When an attack involved bullets the bullet variable takes a 1 value and when it involves aircraft or
missiles a different variable takes one. Again the variables are mutually exclusive and an event may
have zero for both, tank shells are the most common weapon excluded by this. Interaction terms then
allow more narrow Dirty War indexes to be made. The Israeli military seems to massively prefer
1 “Open-fire Regulations and Rules of International Humanitarian Law .” B'Tselem. 1 Jan 2011. Web. 12 Jan 2014
2 “Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces in the Occupied Territories, after operation Cast Lead.” B'Tselem. Web. 12
Jan 2014
Palestinian Deaths Since Operation Cast Lead, Gaza and West Bank
Killed on/in Vehicle Killed in Home
Civilian Casualties 12 62
Total Causalities 82 91
DWI 15 68

2. Jacob Levine
aircraft. This is perhaps due to the lower risk to soldiers, though it may also be because aircraft attacks
are far more likely to be fatal. In homes 71 of deaths are from aircraft and only 9 are from bullets. With
vehicles 69 were hit by aircraft and 11 by bullets. The small number of bullet deaths may be
problematic statistically and as much may not make a difference.
Notionally though, it might be thought bullets cause less collateral damage than bombs as a
soldier has much more trigger discipline than a 1000kg payload. That thought may also explain why
there are fewer bullet deaths overall if it is assumed Israeli soldiers are trying to limit causalities. The
dirty war index supports this. Remarkably, none killed by bullets in their home were civilians while the
index is 73 for missiles hitting homes. Though higher than the full total, the index is not that much
higher due to nearly all attacks being done by missile. Similar logic holds true with vehicles as an
index of 16 for missile and 9 for bullets.
Table 2: Palestinian Deaths by bullets since Operation Cast Lead, Gaza and West Bank
Table 3: Palestinian Deaths by missiles and aircraft since Operation Cast Lead, Gaza and West Bank
The first interpretation that might be taken from this is using infantry brings far less collateral
damage than aircraft. The small number of bullet cases might attest to this, but it also calls into
question how reliable that claim might be. Using infantry brings in new risks of soldier death and failed
operations which would factor in. Of the 7 Israeli security force deaths occurring since operation cast
lead, 3 were caused by bullets in fire exchanges and another 1 by a sniper bullet.3
This may suggest
reluctance to use infantry forces, but even in operation cast lead only 3 Israeli military deaths were
caused by gunfire exchanges in an operation using division sized forces. Large operations include
extensive engineer and armor use which may not be appropriate for day to day needs, however4
.
Whatever reasoning Israeli commanders use, it is clear they have a preference for air responses over
3 “Israeli security force personnel killed by Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, after operation Cast Lead. B'Tselem.
Web. 9 Feb 2014.
4 Aaron J. Klein “Israel Enters Gaza: Negotiating with Extreme Prejudice.” Time. Jan. 04, 2009. Web. 11 Feb 2014.
Killed on/in Vehicle Killed in Home
Civilian Casualties 0 1
Total Causalities 11 9
DWI 0 11
Palestinian Deaths Since Operation Cast Lead, Gaza and West Bank
Killed in Home Killed in Vehicle
Civilian Casualties 52 11
Total Causalities 69 71
DWI 75 15

3. Jacob Levine
infantry, especially in the Gaza strip. The construction of the dirty war indices here also excludes
reactive bullet attacks, notably those civilians shoot for straying to close to border fences.
What is far more interesting is the huge difference between the index for cars and the index for
homes. Using the original reasoning of bombs being less discriminating, this makes little sense. After
all, a bomb does not have a smaller blast radius aimed at a car than it does at a house. To explain this
large variation, a few guesses can be made and another look at the details are needed. One potential
explanation is how car deaths are defined. A house is far larger than a moped so the blast radius of a
bomb would include more people in the house. When a vehicle is hit though, bystanders who were on
the street may be killed without being targeted and count as a dirty death while not being on foot. A
look at the details given in the deaths notes shows little in the way of collateral damage from car
attacks; incidents on the same day do not seem to be linked unless explicitly noted as they tend to be in
completely different location. Injuries are not included but it is reasonable to narrow the focus to
fatalities.
Notes may also suggest attacks on vehicles are more reactive than planned. Deaths on mopeds
frequently note that one to four men were killed while either armed or after firing rockets at Israel.
Reactive attacks would have a different nature than the planned attacks made anywhere. Reactive
attacks might bring different risk though, and that still does not settle why missiles are dirtier hitting
houses than when hitting vehicles. A solution may be that not all missiles are created equally. B'Tseem
does not further define missile or aircraft when the Israeli military has a wide range of weapons. One
such is the Apache which fires a hellfire Air to Surface missile, an anti tank weapon designed for
penetration rather than blast radius.5
Fixed wing aircraft meanwhile fire fragmentation warheads which
aim for a large radius6
. These weapons also cause the sort of structural damage that would collapse a
ceiling or cause other structural damage. Even with the best targeting and appropriate systems such as
the Joint Attack Direct munition, structural damage complete with falling debris would be more prone
to cause collateral damage than a direct hit on a small target like a car. This in addition to the closer
range of helicopters means that weapons fired from Apaches would be less prone to cause collateral
damage as opposed to fixed wing craft. Further classification of the weapons systems would be needed
to quantitatively verify this though. Even with all potential explanations, quantitative data shows that
hitting vehicles is a less damaging strategy than hitting homes regardless of ammunition used.
5 Arie Egozi “Israel Seeks more Apache Attack Helicopters.” Flight Global. 27 Feb 2009. Web. 13 Jan 2014
6 “Large Caliber Ammunition - Types of Warhead.” Federation of American Scientists. 6 Feb 2000. Web. 13 Jan 2014

4. Jacob Levine