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Research

IDF Civilian-Harm Mitigation Practices and Their Limits

There are two shallow ways to describe Israel's conduct in Gaza: to say the IDF takes no precautions at all, or to say warnings and legal advisers prove the campaign was lawful. The public record is more serious than either slogan.

Israel uses warnings, evacuation notices, announced routes, legal review, and after-action investigations to reduce civilian harm in Gaza. The existence of those procedures does not establish that every strike was lawful or that the measures worked in practice. Several documented failures show why the system must be judged by outcomes as well as design.

What the law requires

The ICRC’s handbook on military operations sets the core rule clearly. Parties must take all feasible steps to avoid or limit harm to civilians. That includes real advance warnings when civilians may be affected, unless the situation does not allow. The same frame also covers target checks, proportion tests, weapon and timing choices, and the duty to pick the option that puts civilians at least risk.1

Warnings are therefore relevant but only one part of the legal assessment.

What Israel is documented as doing

The best public legal review of Israeli warning practice is Michael Schmitt’s October 2023 analysis for the Lieber Institute at West Point. He notes that the duty to warn is a customary rule of armed conflict. The IDF has long used many kinds of warning in Gaza. Phone calls. Text messages. Leaflets. Radio and TV. Social-media notices. In some cases, “roof knocking.” He also notes that Israel has often gone further on warning technique than many militaries do.2

Official Israeli wartime releases show the same basic setup. In the early months of the 2023 war, the IDF announced humanitarian windows and opened the Salah al-Din route so civilians could move south. Those notices do not prove every civilian had a truly safe exit. They do show that a warning-and-movement system ran day to day.34

The record presents two separate questions:

  • does Israel have any harm-reduction system at all; and
  • has that system been enough, lawful, and honestly applied in this war.

The cited sources answer the first question affirmatively. The second requires examination of specific operations and outcomes.

Why warnings are not enough

The harder question is whether those tools really protected civilians in practice.

Marc Garlasco’s January 2024 Lawfare review accepts that warnings, evacuation orders, and target review exist while explaining how they can fail. A warning may offer little protection when civilians have nowhere safe to go, when declared safe zones are later struck, or when weapons are poorly suited to dense residential areas. Warning civilians does not by itself make a later strike lawful.5

That is a serious critique and a fair one. International law does not force civilians to leave their homes when warned. A military still has to account for civilians who cannot move, will not move, or have moved many times already.15

A documented failure: the World Central Kitchen strike

The clearest case of Israeli mitigation failure in this war is the 1 April 2024 strike on the World Central Kitchen convoy.

Israel’s own investigation said the strike on three WCK vehicles should not have happened. The IDF found the convoy was misidentified. It found the vehicles were wrongly flagged as carrying Hamas fighters. It found the strike broke orders and standard practice in serious ways. Officers were fired and rebuked.6

The finding shows both that the IDF has a process capable of acknowledging grave error and that formal procedures do not necessarily prevent disaster.

Hospitals, warnings, and misuse

The hospital question is where legal nuance matters most. As Schmitt explains, medical sites get special protection. That protection can be lost if they are used for acts that harm the enemy. Even then, the law expects a warning with a fair chance to end the misuse when the situation allows.2

Two things can both be true:

  • military use of hospitals by Hamas or PIJ is unlawful and relevant; and
  • Israel still carries a heavy burden when it strikes or besieges hospital grounds.

This is one reason the hospital record stays contested. Some of Israel’s narrower claims about misuse have outside backing, including U.S. intelligence on Al-Shifa. That does not settle every question about proportion, siege, or the care of patients.7

Bottom line

Israel has a documented civilian-harm mitigation system, including warning and review practices that exceed those of many militaries in some respects. Those practices have not prevented devastating civilian harm. In the World Central Kitchen strike, the system failed in ways Israel’s own investigation acknowledged. Neither fact cancels the other, and neither can answer the legality of every operation without a strike-specific record.

Sources

Footnotes

  1. International Committee of the Red Cross, Handbook on International Rules Governing Military Operations, 2024 edition, icrc.org. ↩ ↩2

  2. Michael N. Schmitt, “Israel-Hamas 2023 Symposium - The IDF, Hamas, and the Duty to Warn,” Lieber Institute West Point, 27 October 2023, lieber.westpoint.edu. ↩ ↩2

  3. IDF, “IDF Forces Operate to Open Salah Al-Din Humanitarian Route For Gazans’ Evacuation,” 4 November 2023, idf.il. ↩

  4. IDF, “IDF reopens a humanitarian corridor in Gaza,” November 2023, idf.il. ↩

  5. Marc Garlasco, “Legal Questions Answered and Unanswered in Israel’s Air War in Gaza,” Lawfare, 2 January 2024, lawfaremedia.org. ↩ ↩2

  6. IDF, “Conclusion of the Investigation Into the Incident in Which WCK Employees Were Killed During a Humanitarian Operation in Gaza,” 5 April 2024, idf.il. ↩

  7. Associated Press, “US intel confident militant groups used largest Gaza hospital in campaign against Israel: AP source,” 2 January 2024, apnews.com. ↩