Much of the legal debate about Israel’s conduct in Gaza has focused on proportionality — whether the civilian harm caused by specific strikes was excessive relative to the military advantage gained. A War on the Rocks article by Orbach, Boxman, Henkin, and Braverman makes a crucial clarification that has been largely absent from that debate: under international law, proportionality is assessed strike by strike, not cumulatively across an entire campaign. The scale of destruction in Gaza cannot, by itself, constitute evidence of disproportionality. Each attack must be evaluated against its specific military objective and the foreseeable harm at the moment of decision.
But proportionality and distinction — the two principles that dominate public discourse about Gaza — are not the only ethical considerations governing how armies fight. There is a third, and it is the one Israel’s critics most consistently ignore: the obligation to protect one’s own forces, and the corresponding right to transfer risk away from soldiers when military necessity demands it.
The Law is Not a One-Way Street
