Have you heard of Israel's "Dahiya" Military Doctrine?
The Doctrine originates in the 2006 Lebanon War, and can be traced back to 1938 British State-Terrorism Tactics
Gaza Strip, Oct 10, 2023 (Wikipedia | Download: Dahiya Definition Image)
“Naming” what the US Corporate media won’t discuss:
Often when I feel like I’m being gaslit, I find it can be helpful to be able to have a name for what is happening and some context. “Dahiya” is the name given to the Israeli military doctrine, which was used in Lebanon in 2006, and in Gaza in 2008-09, 2012, 2014, and 2021.
The doctrine originated in the Lebanon War in 2006, when Israel was unable to defeat Hezbollah militarily, so they decided to attack civilian areas in Dahiya, Lebanon, a suburb of Beirut that was a Hezbollah stronghold.
Summary:
Create “unbearable” civilian suffering by using disproportionate force to destroy civilian infrastructure.
This “unbearable” civilian suffering, it is hoped, will pressure the population to turn against the militants and demand an end to the conflict.
In many cases civilians are evacuated before a bombing, but 972 magazine reports that during the Oct 7 attacks “some high-rises — which we assume to have been power targets -- were toppled without prior warning.”1
Prior to Oct 7, the military was used so frequently against Gaza that it came to be known as "Mowing the Grass" -- the idea of repeatedly "conducting short, sharp military operations to maintain a certain level of control over the area without committing to a long-term political solution, similar to how one would mow a lawn to keep it neat and tidy"
“Safeguarding Civilian Lives” vs Creating Unbearable Civilian Suffering
I speculate that the major US media has been unwilling to discuss the topic, even while Israeli spokesperson Mark Regev gaslights us about safeguarding innocent lives, because being open with the truth is too explosive. Perhaps they are waiting for the term to trend on social media or for some major news outlet to “stick their neck out” first.
Here’s a sampling of the background I found while researching Israel’s “Dahiya doctrine”:
Summaries: What is the Dahiya doctrine?
a) Wikipedia
The Dahiya doctrine, or Dahya doctrine,[1] is a military strategy of asymmetric warfare, outlined by former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of General Staff Gadi Eizenkot, which encompasses the destruction of the civilian infrastructure of regimes deemed to be hostile as a measure calculated to create civilian suffering to pressure combatants.[2] and endorses the employment of "disproportionate force" to secure that end.[3][4]
The doctrine is named after the Dahieh neighborhood of Beirut, where Hezbollah was headquartered during the 2006 Lebanon War, which were heavily damaged by the IDF.[2]
Noting that Dahya was the Shia quarter in Beirut that was razed by the Israeli Air Force during the 2006 Lebanon War, Israeli journalist Yaron London wrote in 2008 that the doctrine, will become entrenched in our security discourse.
.. The doctrine is defined in a 2009 report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel as follows: The military approach expressed in the Dahiye Doctrine deals with asymmetrical combat against an enemy that is not a regular army and is embedded within civilian population; its objective is to avoid a protracted guerrilla war
According to this approach Israel has to employ tremendous force disproportionate to the magnitude of the enemy’s actions. The report further argues that the doctrine was fully implemented during Operation Cast Lead.
b) Wikipedia: (older version)
Naftali Bennett told Haaretz in a March 2017 interview: The Lebanese institutions, its infrastructure, airport, power stations, traffic junctions, Lebanese Army bases – they should all be legitimate targets if a war breaks out. That’s what we should already be saying to them and the world now. If Hezbollah fires missiles at the Israeli home front, this will mean sending Lebanon back to the Middle Ages. He claimed that this strategy would speed up international intervention and shorten the campaign.
c) Real News Network Video (August 24, 2014)
d) Google Bard AI
I asked Google’s AI questions:
Question:
What does the Dahiya Doctrine say in regard to targeting?
AI Answer:
The Dahiya Doctrine, attributed to the Israeli military, is highly controversial due to its stance on targeting. Here's what it suggests:
Disproportionate Force: The doctrine advocates for using overwhelming and disproportionate force against enemies like Hezbollah, who often operate within civilian populations. This means causing far greater damage and destruction than the enemy inflicts, aiming for a swift and decisive victory through intimidation and fear.
Civilian Infrastructure as Targets: The doctrine blurs the lines between civilian and military targets. It argues that civilian infrastructure, such as power grids, communication networks, and even homes in areas where militants operate, can be legitimate targets. This rationale stems from the belief that crippling civilian infrastructure weakens the enemy's support base and hinders their ability to wage war.
Creating "Unbearable Suffering": The doctrine's ultimate goal is to inflict "unbearable suffering" on the civilian population in enemy territory. This suffering, it claims, will pressure the population to turn against the militants and demand an end to the conflict, effectively achieving Israeli objectives without engaging in protracted guerilla warfare.
Humanitarian Law Violations: Critics widely condemn the Dahiya Doctrine as a violation of international humanitarian law. Targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure is explicitly prohibited under Geneva Conventions and customary international law. The doctrine's disregard for proportionality and distinction between combatants and civilians raises serious concerns about its legality and ethics.
Israeli Ambiguity: Officially, the Israeli government has never explicitly endorsed the Dahiya Doctrine. However, its application has been observed in various military operations, particularly during the 2006 Lebanon War and subsequent conflicts in Gaza. This ambiguity fuels ongoing debates about the doctrine's true nature and its place in Israeli military strategy.
It's important to note that the Dahiya Doctrine remains a contested concept. While some view it as a necessary tool for deterrence and achieving quick victories against unconventional enemies, others condemn it as a form of collective punishment and state terrorism. The debate surrounding its targeting principles and adherence to international law continues to this day.
Question:
In what conflicts has the Dahiya Doctrine been applied?
Answer:
The Dahiya Doctrine, named after the southern Beirut suburbs heavily damaged during the 2006 Lebanon War, is a controversial military strategy attributed to former Israeli Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot. While its exact details and official status remain debated, it's understood to advocate for:
Disproportionate force: Using overwhelming power against non-state actors like Hezbollah, even if it causes significant civilian casualties.
Targeting civilian infrastructure: Damaging roads, power grids, and other facilities to hinder enemy operations and pressure their leadership.
Swift and decisive action: Aiming for a quick and brutal conflict to minimize Israeli losses and deter future attacks.
Here are some conflicts where the Dahiya Doctrine's application is suspected or debated:
2006 Lebanon War: The heavy destruction in southern Lebanon, particularly Dahiya, and the high civilian death toll fueled accusations of the doctrine being employed.
2008-09 Gaza War: Similar patterns of civilian casualties and infrastructure damage led to renewed concerns about the doctrine's influence.
2014 Operation Protective Edge: The extensive Gaza bombardment and civilian deaths again raised questions about the doctrine's role in shaping Israeli strategy.
2021 Hamas-Israel conflict: While the intensity was shorter, the use of airstrikes and the civilian death toll reignited the debate about the doctrine's potential influence.
It's important to note that attributing specific actions to the Dahiya Doctrine is challenging. The doctrine itself is not officially acknowledged by the Israeli military, and its exact content and application remain unclear. Additionally, other factors, like wartime chaos and evolving military strategies, can make it difficult to isolate the doctrine's precise impact.
Despite the ambiguity, the Dahiya Doctrine raises critical concerns about proportionality in warfare, civilian protection, and the potential for escalation in conflicts involving non-state actors. Whether explicitly stated or not, its shadow looms over discussions of Israeli military strategy and its impact on both Palestinian civilians and the broader dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Primary/ Academia Sources:
1) The Third Lebanon War: Target Lebanon
by Giora Eiland
(retired Major General in IDF, head of Israeli National Security Council)
“Intense suffering among the population”
There is one way to prevent the Third Lebanon War and win it if it does break out (and thereby prevent the Fourth Lebanon War): to make it clear to Lebanon’s allies and through them to the Lebanese government and people that the next war will be between Israel and Lebanon and not between Israel and Hizbollah. Such a war will lead to the elimination of the Lebanese military, the destruction of the national infrastructure, and intense suffering among the population. There will be no recurrence of the situation where Beirut residents (not including the Dahiya quarter) go to the beach and cafes while Haifa residents sit in bomb shelters. Serious damage to the Republic of Lebanon, the destruction of homes and infrastructure, and the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people are consequences that can influence Hizbollah’s behavior more than anything else.
2) The Analysis of Dahiya Docrine
In the Context of Israel’s Further Security Claim
Zafer Balpinar
Destroy 100 houses for each rocket
The mentioned Israeli intention is understood from Deputy Prime Minister, Eli Yishai’s statement “even if the rockets they have launched land on open areas or sea, we must destroy 100 houses for each of rockets” (Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, 2009: 332), and Minister of Interior, Meir Sheetrit’s statement “inflict Gazan people 100 times more losses they have given you” (Byman, 2011: 200).
Disproportionality a Plan for the Future
Prime Minister Ehud Barak denoted that the operation was carried out by violating proportionality and that the operational method would be guiding doctrine in Israel’s future wars.
Weizmann E (2010), Legislative Attack, Theory, Culture & Society, 27 (6), 11-32
Target Civilian Infrastructure
The commission underlined that Israel hit not only military targets but also civilian infrastructure in order to get a decisive result (Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, 2009: 114). The commission’s impression, namely, the similarity of Gaza operation to Dahiya case, was accepted by outsiders and security analysts too (Harel, 2014; Khalidi, 2014: 5-13; Katz, 2010; Flibbert, 2011: 65; Bhatt, 2012: 820; Harel, 2008).
Unbearable Losses to Traumatise Civilians
What is aspired via serious destruction and unbearable losses is to increase the enemy’s psychological trauma, and then to refer it to desperation, and in very end to cause to change its political/military behaviour. Disproportion dose functions as force multiplier in the military success.
Blur Concept of Civilian
It can be said that the doctrine’s employment as a flexible form of military action is closely related to blurring the concept of civilian. In context of this association, Israel accepts that the harmed non-combatants are not in fact civilians, that are in the way of aiding and abetting the combatants and that civilians act as armed elements when appropriate.
Unbearable Suffering
The message to the other party is that, if they attack Israel, they have to take into consideration unbearable sufferings which will be determined by Israel in terms of size and timing.
Other Sources:
A) Washington Post: The punishing military doctrine that Israel may be following in Gaza
Ishaan Tharoor
A few days after Hamas’s horrific Oct. 7 rampage through southern Israel, a top Israeli military official was blunt about his nation’s military response. Israeli security officials repeatedly stress the steps they take to minimize civilian harm and claim they are only striking legitimate military targets. In recent days, Daniel Hagari, spokesman of the Israel Defense Forces, accused Hamas of “cynically” deploying its assets in civilian areas and near critical infrastructure, like hospitals. But when speaking in the offensive’s early stage, Hagari revealed that the “emphasis” of the IDF’s reprisal was “on damage and not on accuracy.”
.. There are reams of commentary on what Israel’s strategy and endgame may be as it seeks to nullify the long-standing threat posed by Hamas and purge the Islamist militant faction from its Gaza redoubts. But looming behind it — and implicit in Hagari’s “emphasis” on damage over accuracy — is a long-standing Israeli military doctrine that appears to be in play now.
The so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” took shape in the wake of the bruising 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Dahiya refers to the southern Beirut suburbs where Hezbollah maintained its strongholds and which were pummeled by Israeli jets after hostilities began when Hezbollah fighters abducted two Israeli soldiers. The onslaught then took Hezbollah by surprise, whose senior leadership had not expected to see their headquarters turned into rubble nor had planned for such a relentless bombardment. “I said that we shouldn’t exaggerate, that Israel will just retaliate a bit, bomb a couple of targets and that would be the end of it,” a Hezbollah operative told former Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid in 2006.
The doctrine that emerged out of the conflict was most famously articulated by IDF commander Gadi Eisenkot. “We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases,” he told an Israeli newspaper in 2008. “This isn’t a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.”
.. The doctrine appeared to be in operation during a round of hostilities between Hamas in Gaza and Israel at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009. A U.N.-commissioned report regarding that conflict, which saw the deaths of more than 1,400 Palestinians and Israelis, determined that Israel’s campaign was “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.”
The doctrine endured in the years since. “Israeli military correspondents and security analysts repeatedly reported that the Dahiya doctrine was Israel’s strategy throughout the war in Gaza this past summer,” observed Palestinian American scholar Rashid Khalidi in the fall of 2014, after another Israeli campaign left more than 1,460 civilians dead, including almost 500 children. “Let us be frank: this is actually less of a strategic doctrine than it is an explicit outline of collective punishment and probable war crimes.”
Polite Company doesn’t discuss
He added: “Not surprisingly, one found little mention of the Dahiya doctrine whether in statements by U.S. politicians, or in the reporting of the war by most of the mainstream American media, which dwelt on the description of Israel’s actions as ‘self-defense.’”
Eisenkot is now a member of Israel’s unity “war cabinet.” No Israeli politician or security official has explicitly invoked the “Dahiya doctrine” as a template for the destruction unleashed in Gaza.
Denial: compare with reports from 972 magazine & building demolitions
“I don’t think this doctrine applies today,” Siboni, now of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told French newspaper Le Monde last month, arguing that everything Israel is targeting are explicitly military targets.
Siboni added that Israel’s efforts to coax Palestinians in northern Gaza to flee to the south was a sign of its humanitarian approach. “As for those who remain, too bad,” he told Le Monde. “They choose to put their lives on the line.”
B) +972 Magazine: A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza
This is such a good article I made a separate page summarizing it.
It lists the 4 types of targets Israel has define and describes how Israel attacks “power targets” such as universities and residential towers that have little military value but are attacked as a way to shock and intimidate civilians.
C) The Guardian: Israel’s use of disproportionate force is a long-established tactic – with a clear aim
How to make sense of the sheer intensity of Israel’s war in Gaza? One understanding is that it is the result of the enduring shock of the 7 October massacre combined with a far-right government that includes extreme elements. Yet this ignores another element: a specific Israeli approach to war known as the Dahiya doctrine.
.. Physical destruction in Gaza has been massive: 60% of the territory’s total housing stock (234,000 homes) is damaged, 46,000 of which are completely destroyed.
D) Institute for Middle East Understanding: The Dahiya Doctrine and Israel’s Use of Disproportionate Force
(Dec 07, 2012). Further References
In October 2008, Gabi Siboni, Director of the Military and Strategic Affairs Program at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a quasi-governmental think tank with close ties to the Israeli political and military establishments, published a policy paper entitled "Disproportionate Force: Israel's Concept of Response in Light of the Second Lebanon War." (Read more)
E) The Irish Times: “Surrender or we’ll keep killing your kids” (Aug 21, 2014)
.. The assault is an expression of the Dahiya doctrine. The title refers to the Dahiya neighbourhood of Beirut, devastated in August 2006 in retaliation for the failure of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) to defeat Hizbullah in clashes in southern Lebanon during which large numbers of civilians were either directly killed by bombs or crushed as they huddled in the rubble of their homes.
In October 2006 the head of Israel’s northern command, Maj Gen Udi Adam, resigned, taking responsibility for the failure. He was replaced by Gadi Eizenkot, previously military secretary to the office of the prime minister, subsequently deputy chief of the general staff.
What was needed was more ruthlessness, Eizenkot declared. Time to take the gloves off. “What happened in the Dahiya district will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on . . . We will apply disproportionate force and cause great damage and destruction. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.”
The spirit of the doctrine infused the text of the advertisement published in the Guardian on August 4th, headed "Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago . . . now it's Hamas's turn".
The bluntness of the statement apparently offended many readers of the paper. But it was no more than a restatement of the defence of the mass killing of children which was being offered day in and day out by various Israeli spokespersons.
The actions were intended to defend Israeli citizens from Hamas attacks: the way to stop the killing of Palestinian children, then, was for Hamas to desist. Or to put it another way – surrender or we’ll keep on killing your kids. The sentiment was exactly in line with Eizenkot’s precepts.
F) Turkish Radio and Television: “State Terrorism” (July 3, 2017)
Israeli actions in Gaza now strongly indicate that the policy, which would fly in the face of international law, is currently being pursued with gusto by Israeli forces.
Israeli warplanes have completely destroyed several civilian tower blocks in Gaza, and continuing airstrikes have left more than 100 Palestinians dead, including 17 children.
That's not an accident but a feature of Israel's strategy, which aims to instill fear in civilians who stand up to the Zionist state.
Israel will have to "respond disproportionately in order to make it abundantly clear that the State of Israel will accept no attempt to disrupt the calm currently prevailing along its borders", added the INSS think tank.
A senior Israeli General, Gadi Eisenkot, speaking to the Israeli press in 2008, said that the Dahiya Doctrine "isn't a suggestion" but a "plan that has already been authorised."
In 2006 Israel's then army chief General Dan Halutz boasted that the military would target civilian infrastructure in Lebanon with the aim to "turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years."
Israel implanted such a policy during its attack on Gaza in 2008-2009, which left more than 1,400 Palestinians dead.
The United Nations commissioned a fact-finding mission known as the Goldstone Report, which concluded that the Israeli strategy was "designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population."
The international law professor Richard Falk has described Israel's Dahiya Doctrine "not only an overt violation of the most elementary norms of the law of war and of universal morality, but an avowal of a doctrine of violence that needs to be called by its proper name: state terrorism."
As Israeli bombardment in Gaza continues and civilian deaths mount, Tel Aviv will suggest that civilian deaths are a result of Hamas using human shields. Established Israeli military practice suggests otherwise.
G) The Hannibal code and Dahiya doctrine: Israel’s controversial directives which could already be in use in Gaza (October 11, 2023)
Hannibal Directive
Israel may also be employing a second controversial practice known as the Hannibal Directive for avoiding the capture of soldiers.
This directive has not been openly explained by the IDF but military officials have cited it in several operations since it was introduced in the 80s.
Israeli newspaper Maariv explained the concept as an imperative “to act in every possible way to prevent the kidnapping and imprisonment of soldiers… including putting abductees at risk”.
The last known use of Hannibal was in a massive bombardment of the Rafah crossing in Gaza in a 2014 war after Israeli Lieutenant Hadar Goldin was captured by Hamas. The IDF later said the procedure had been revised without offering further details.
The principle of risking the death of a captive to avoid hostages may be in effect now, said Dr Mekelberg, as Israel prioritises the destruction of Hamas targets over the recovery of hostages.
Professor Asa Kasher, one of the authors of the Israeli military’s ethics code, said in 2014 that Hannibal was often understood to allow for the killing of soldiers to avoid them being held captive.
“If there are so many soldiers that understand the order that way, including high-ranking commanders, then it is right to cancel it, erase it, to throw it out and to write a new order that will be unequivocal,” he said.
History: War Crimes & Terrorism
H) Socialist Worker: History of Collective Punishment (originating with the British)
The Israeli military has always embraced the doctrine of collective punishment, that inflicting death and destruction on whole populations is the best way to crush resistance. Indeed, the Zionists learned it from the British during the brutal suppression of the great Palestinian revolt of 1936 to 39.
If Palestinians attacked British troops, the colonial forces would often destroy nearby villages. British soldiers publicly beat and sometimes shot Palestinians as part of the reprisal. Even when just searching homes, the soldiers were encouraged to completely wreck them in order to teach the “natives” a lesson.
On one occasion an officer was dissatisfied by how much damage his troops had done in a village. He had them watch while he showed them how to really smash up someone’s home—and then had them wreck the village a second time.
The most notorious incident took place in September 1938 at the village of al-Bassa. British troops loaded some 50 Palestinian men onto a bus, and then made the driver go over a mine.
The Zionist settlers were mobilised by the British to help crush the Palestinian resistance and saw their methods firsthand. They embraced this brutal method of colonial warfare. It became part of Israel’s military doctrine in the aftermath of the assault on Lebanon in August 2006, when its air force destroyed the Dahiya district of Beirut.
General Gadi Eizenkot made clear that, what Israel had done to Dahiya, it would do to every village or town that dared to resist.
As he put it, what happened to Dahiya would “happen in every village from which Israel is fired on”. “We will apply disproportionate force and cause immense damage and destruction,” he threatened. As far as he was concerned, “harming the population was the only means of restraining” resistance group Hezbollah.
Eizenkot is today a minister in Netanyahu’s government. Israel has consistently used this “Dahiya doctrine” in every attack on Gaza since its 2009 offensive. The United Nations (UN)-commissioned Goldstone report concluded, “The Israeli government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right to self-defence.”
But the reports’ authors “consider the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target—the people of Gaza as a whole”.
The operations were part of “an overall policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population for its resilience and for its apparent support for Hamas”. This indictment is even more true today.
.. What we are seeing is the most brutal murderous collective punishment, carried out with the support of both the Tory government and the Labour opposition.
That’s what makes it all the more important to keep mobilising against Israel and its backers in parliament.
International law professor Richard Falk says the Dahiya doctrine is “not only an overt violation of the most elementary norms of the law of war and of universal morality”. It is “an avowal of a doctrine of violence that needs to be called by its proper name—state terrorism”.
We have to say, “Not in our name!”
Operation Cast Lead
I) The Guardian (January 7, 2019)
The claim that the operation was designed to “terrorise a civilian population” needs underlining. Terrorism is the use of force against civilians for political purposes. By this definition Operation Cast Lead was an act of state terrorism. The political aim was to force the population to repudiate Hamas, which had won a clear majority in the elections of January 2006.
Operation Cast Lead is emblematic of everything that is wrong with Israel’s approach to Gaza. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a political conflict to which there is no military solution. Yet Israel persists in shunning diplomacy and relying on brute military force – and not as a last resort but as a first resort. Force is the default setting. And there is a popular Israeli saying that goes with it: “If force doesn’t work, use more force!”
Operation Cast Lead was just the first in a series of Israeli mini-wars on Gaza. It was followed by Operation Pillar of Defence in November 2012 and Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014. The fancy names given to these operations were fraudulent, dressing up offensive attacks on defenceless civilians and civilian infrastructure in the sanctimonious language of self-defence. They are typical examples of Orwellian double-speak. UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon called the Israeli attack on 1 August 2014 on Rafah, in which a large number of civilians sheltering in UN schools were killed, “a moral outrage and a criminal act”.
This is what “morally bankruptcy” looks like:
Ted Cruz defends the indefensible:
Ryan Grim asks Ted Cruz about Israel’s killing of civilians. Breaking points Dec 1, 2023
Terrorism defined:
The FBI defines terrorism as the use of violence or force against people or property to intimidate or coerce a government or civilian population. The purpose is to achieve political or social objectives.
How the British taught Terrorism to the Zionists (September 7, 1938)
On 7 September 1938, British troops descended on the village of al-Bassa in Palestine. They came to punish the villagers for an attack on a British lorry that had been blown up a few days earlier. The villagers were rounded up and their homes were destroyed.
Some of them were shot out of hand and others were publicly beaten, flogged, in front of their families and neighbours. The collective punishment culminated with some fifty villagers being packed onto a bus, which was then blown up. This was how the British crushed the great Palestinian revolt. (More info)
NEXT:
Best Analysis of Israel’s “Targeting” Strategy:
Elsewhere:
Reddit Discussion: What are pro-Israeli opinions about the Dahiya doctrine?
UN Investigation into 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead: Goldstein backs down: Israel’s internal investigations “showed that Israel had not targeted civilians as a matter of policy”
The sources who have previously worked on power targets said that the brazen strategy of the current war could be a dangerous development, explaining that attacking power targets was originally intended to “shock” Gaza but not necessarily to kill large numbers of civilians. “The targets were designed with the assumption that high-rises would be evacuated of people, so when we were working on [compiling the targets], there was no concern whatsoever regarding how many civilians would be harmed; the assumption was that the number would always be zero,” said one source with deep knowledge of the tactic.
“This would mean there would be a total evacuation [of the targeted buildings], which takes two to three hours, during which the residents are called [by phone to evacuate], warning missiles are fired, and we also crosscheck with drone footage that people are indeed leaving the high-rise,” the source added.
However, evidence from Gaza suggests that some high-rises — which we assume to have been power targets — were toppled without prior warning. +972 and Local Call located at least two cases during the current war in which entire residential high-rises were bombed and collapsed without warning, and one case in which, according to the evidence, a high-rise building collapsed on civilians who were inside.