The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) allegedly loosened their rules of engagement with Hamas after October 07, 2023, giving officers permission to conduct airstrikes even when they knew that dozens of civilians would be killed, the New York Times has reported.
In fact, the IDF issued an order authorizing mid-ranking officers to strike not just senior Hamas commanders or known military sites, but also low-level fighters and sites with a potentially high number of civilian bystanders, the newspaper reported on Thursday, citing interviews with Israeli officers.
Whereas the IDF officially tolerated between five and ten civilian casualties for every enemy operative killed in the past, the change in the rules bumped the number of acceptable casualties up to 20, the New York Times’ sources said.
But in practice, IDF commanders authorized strikes that they knew would endanger more than 100 civilians, the newspaper claimed, citing interviews with more than 100 military personnel.
Flawed systems were used to identify targets, and unguided 2,000-pound bombs were used in strikes that previously would have called for smaller munitions, it added. Within three days of Hamas’ attack, the IDF removed a pre-existing cap on the number of strikes their forces could conduct in a single day. As a result, some 30,000 munitions were fired in the first seven weeks of the conflict, more than in the next eight months combined, according to the report.
Israeli forces have killed nearly 45,400 people in Gaza since the conflict began, according to figures supplied by Gaza’s Health Ministry and accepted as accurate by the UN. The majority of those killed have been women and children.
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