As retired U.S. generals, admirals, and military legal experts, we undertook this study of the May 2021 armed conflict between Israel and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in the Gaza Strip to glean legal, strategic, operational, and technological observations about the challenges confronting Israel today and that the United States could face in the future.
Perhaps the most telling feature of the Gaza conflict was the strategy mismatch between Israel’s purely military and operational objectives to degrade Hamas’ military capabilities— assisted by impressive advances in identifying and precisely striking targets—and Hamas’ information-based strategic objectives of delegitimizing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in global opinion and degrading the IDF’s operational advantage.
Our consensus judgment is that IDF military operations complied with Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) and consistently implemented precautions to mitigate civilian risk, some exceeding those implemented in recent U.S. combat operations that we participated in, despite confronting an adversary that often sought to exacerbate that risk deliberately.
Learning from Israel’s experience, the United States should prepare to face future adversaries, from loosely organized terrorist groups to conventional armed forces, that willingly put civilians at risk and blame the other side for it.
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