By John Spencer chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point; served for 25 years as an infantry soldier and two tours in Iraq


No military fighting an entrenched enemy in dense urban 

terrain in an area barely twice the size of Washington D.C. can 

avoid all civilian casualties. Reports of over 25,000 Palestinians

killed, be they civilians or Hamas, have made headlines. 

But Israel has taken more measures to avoid needless civilian 

harm than virtually any other nation that's fought an urban war.

In fact, as someone who has served two tours in Iraq and 

studied urban warfare for over a decade, Israel has taken 

precautionary measures even the United States did not do 

during its recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.


I say this not to put Israel on a pedestal or to diminish the 

human suffering of Gazans but rather to correct a number of 

misperceptions when it comes to urban warfare.


First is the use of precision guided munitions (PGMs). This 

term was introduced to nonmilitary audiences during the Gulf 

War, when the U.S. fired 250,000 individual bombs and 

missiles in just 43 days. Only a very small fraction of those 

would fit the definition of PGMs, even though common 

perceptions of that war, and its comparatively low civilian 

casualty rate, was that it was a war of precision.


Let's compare that war, which did not ignite anywhere near the 

same level of outrage internationally, to Israel's current war in 

Gaza. The Israeli Defense Force has used many types of 

PGMs to avoid civilian harm, including the use of munitions 

like small diameter bombs (SDBs), as well as technologies 

and tactics that increase the accuracy of non-PGMs. Israel 

has also employed a tactic, when a military has air supremacy, 

called dive bombing, as well as gathering pre-strike intelligence

on the presence of civilians from satellite imagery, scans of 

cell phone presence, and other target observation techniques. 

All of this is to do more pinpoint targeted to avoid civilian 

deaths. In other words, the simplistic notion that a military 

must use more PGMs versus non-PGMs in a war is false.


A second misperception is a military's choice of munitions and 

how they apply the proportionality principle required by the 

laws of armed conflict. Here there is an assessment of the 

value of the military target to be gained from an act that is 

weighted against the expected collateral damage estimate 

caused by said act. An external viewer with no access to all 

information cannot say such things as a 500-pound bomb 

would achieve the military mission of a 2,000-pound bomb 

with no mention of the context of the value of the military target 

or the context of the strike—like the target being in a deep 

tunnel that would require great penetration.


Third, one of the best ways to prevent civilian casualties in 

urban warfare is to provide warning and evacuate urban areas 

before the full combined air and ground attack commences. 

This tactic is unpopular for obvious reasons: It alerts the 

enemy defender and provides them the military advantage to 

prepare for the attack. The United States did not do this ahead 

of its initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, which involved major urban

 battles to include in Baghdad. It did not do this before its April 

2004 Battle of Fallujah (though it did send civilian warnings 

before the Second Battle of Fallujah six months later).


By contrast, Israel provided days and then weeks of warnings,

 as well as time for civilians to evacuate multiple cities in 

northern Gaza before starting the main air-ground attack of 

urban areas. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) employed their 

practice of calling and texting ahead of an air strike as well as 

roof-knocking, where they drop small munitions on the roof of 

a building notifying everyone to evacuate the building before 

a strike. No military has ever implemented any of these practices in 

war before.


The IDF has also air-dropped flyers to give civilians 

instructions on when and how to evacuate, including with 

safe corridors. (The U.S. implemented these tactics in its 

second battle of Fallujah and 2016-2017 operation against 

ISIS in Mosul.) Israel has dropped over 520,000 pamphlets, 

and broadcast over radio and through social media messages 

to provide instruction for civilians to leave combat areas.


Israel's use of real phone calls to civilians in combat areas 

(19,734), SMS texts (64,399) and pre-recorded calls 

(almost 6 million) to provide instructions on evacuations is 

also unprecedented.