After nearly 700 days of war, the death toll in Gaza has risen to extraordinary levels. Amid heavy bombardment that has turned the territory into a wasteland of rubble and stringent blockades that have led to mass hunger and even starvation, over 61,000 Palestinians have died and over 145,000 have been seriously wounded, according to Gaza’s Hamas-affiliated health authorities, which do not distinguish between civilians and Hamas fighters.
But the true number of the war’s casualties may far outstrip those figures, which do not include the thousands of bodies that remain under the rubble, the large number of dead that could not arrive at morgues, and the excess deaths from the destruction of infrastructure and the ensuing disease, famine, and lack of medical care. In February, the medical journal The Lancet published an extensive analysis based on a wide variety of sources (including obituaries) and estimated that the official death toll underreported the direct war deaths in Gaza by at least 41 percent and perhaps by as much as 107 percent, while not accounting at all for nontrauma-related deaths resulting from the impact of Israeli military operations on Gaza’s health services, food and water supplies, and sanitation.
In sum, the authors of the study suggested that Israel’s campaign has caused at least an additional 26,000 Palestinian deaths and perhaps over 120,000 additional deaths, with the true death toll possibly exceeding 186,000. Taking that into account, as of late July 2025, Israel’s war in Gaza has led to the deaths of between five to ten percent of the prewar population of about 2.2 million. This represents an unprecedented slaughter. Israel’s campaign in Gaza is the most lethal case of a Western democracy using the punishment of civilians as a tactic of war.
Leaders and scholars have long assumed that democracy offered a solution to the worst pathologies of authoritarian states, especially the willingness of a government to subject populations to coercion, cruelty, and violence. Indeed, the United States and other Western democracies, including Israel, have insisted that democracy is crucial for the promotion of fundamental human rights, individual prosperity, and a more peaceful world. For Israel, a country that has long touted its democratic bona fides, to violate core democratic norms in such dramatic fashion cheapens the value of democratic government itself.
Israel’s defenders may insist that civilian deaths are inevitable in a conflict against a burrowed-in terrorist enemy. But it has been clear from Israeli actions—including the targeting of children by snipers, the relentless bombing of civilian infrastructure and residences, and the blockade and starvation of the civilian population—as well as the rhetoric of numerous Israeli officials that Israel’s war is not simply against Hamas but aimed at all the residents of Gaza. That is also the conclusion of numerous international institutions and human rights groups. Indeed, the notion that Hamas can be eradicated via military means is a “fantasy,” as the former Shin Bet director Yoram Cohen said this week. As civilians continue to suffer in Gaza, Israel has squandered the moral high ground for no good strategic purpose.
Israel’s critics may demand that, based on its treatment of the Palestinians, the country should not be considered a democracy. That understates the full dimensions of Israel’s behavior in Gaza. Even now, Israel retains the political institutions built on majority rule and the high levels of citizen participation in free elections that are the hallmarks of representative government and that have long characterized Western democracy. Independent experts, such as Freedom House, still recognize Israel as a democracy. What is truly shocking about events in Gaza is both the scale of the devastation and that the government of Israel can genuinely say that its policies reflect the will of most Israelis. The carnage in Gaza is not the work of authoritarians or demagogues but bears the imprimatur of democracy. Israel’s campaign thus has profound implications both for the long-term security of the country and the value of democracy around the world.
IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY
In my 1996 book, Bombing to Win, I studied every campaign in the twentieth century that employed airpower with the intention of inflicting harm on civilians: 40 campaigns in all, including the Spanish Civil War, the Vietnam War, and the 1991 Gulf War. Only five of the 40 involved civilian deaths greater than one percent of the civilian population. These included four campaigns in and around World War II—Japan’s invasion of China from 1937 to 1945, Germany’s invasion of Poland from 1939 to 1945, the Allied bombing and invasion of Germany from 1939 to 1945, and the U.S. bombing and conquest of Japan from 1942 to 1945—and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1988. In proportional terms, Nazi Germany’s attack on Poland ranks as the deadliest of these campaigns, killing more than 20 percent of the prewar population over six years. That figure was enlarged, of course, by the Holocaust and the slaughter in ghettos and concentration camps of millions of Polish Jews.
Until Gaza, the worst civilian punishment campaign by a Western democracy was the bombing and ground invasion of Germany in World War II, which killed approximately two to four percent of the population, outpacing even the U.S. nuclear attacks and fire-bombing raids on Japan, which killed about one percent of the population. Those estimates from Germany account for deaths caused by both Soviet and Western forces, as well as direct and indirect deaths (as in The Lancet’s study on Gaza).
Whether it is called a “genocide” or not, no sensible observer could look at Israel’s war in Gaza and miss the stunning levels of devastation that Palestinians have endured. Beyond the mass death and suffering, the level of physical devastation is remarkable: satellite analysis by credible independent media outlets, such as The Economist and the Financial Times, reveals that at least 60 percent of all the buildings and 90 percent of homes in Gaza have either been severely damaged or completely destroyed. All 12 of Gaza’s universities, 80 percent of its schools and mosques, and numerous churches, museums, and libraries have also been demolished. No hospital in Gaza is fully functioning, and only 20 out of 36 hospitals are partially functioning.
And yet despite this mammoth destructive enterprise, Israel has not come close to fulfilling its stated aim of eliminating Hamas. The group still has significant appeal among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. It may be diminished as a military force, but it can replenish its depleted ranks with new recruits—indeed, by some accounts, it has managed to bring in over 10,000 new fighters since the war began. The extreme brutality Israel has inflicted on the Palestinian people has not produced the strategic gains that Israeli officials promised.
The moral case for harming civilians is always dubious even when such violence serves a strategic purpose. When that strategic purpose does not exist, however, the moral case evaporates altogether. Israel now finds itself in a morally untenable situation. Rather than incur the world’s growing wrath, increased economic pressure, and the greater likelihood of future violence, Israel must reverse course and pursue alternatives to its campaign of mass death in Gaza.
THE END OF STRATEGY
Throughout history, states have repeatedly punished civilian populations harshly to try to compel local communities to turn against governments and terrorist groups. But even intense civilian punishment rarely achieves these goals. Instead, it often leads to what I have termed the “Pearl Harbor effect”: growing support among the assailed civilian community for its government or for the local terrorist group.
In June 2024, I argued in Foreign Affairs that at least in one way, Hamas was stronger then than it was before October 7, 2023. To be sure, Israeli attacks had devastated the group’s leadership and smashed much of its infrastructure. But according to the most reliable polling information available at that point, Palestinian support for Hamas had remained the same or risen in Gaza and the West Bank. Overall, the taproot of Hamas’s power—its ability to recruit new fighters to replenish losses—had actually increased. In January 2025, U.S. officials revealed that according to their estimates, Hamas had recruited around 15,000 new fighters since the start of Israel’s military operations in 2023, more than making up for the 11,000 to 13,000 losses that U.S. intelligence estimated the group had suffered.
Israel now finds itself in a morally untenable situation.
Much has happened since the start of this year: the end of a two-month cease-fire in March, the escalating Israeli siege and the tightened blockade on food and humanitarian goods entering the territory, the humanitarian crisis affecting Gaza’s entire population, and Israel’s announced intention to conquer at least 75 percent of Gaza—along with the overt consideration by some Israeli leaders that they should expel all Palestinians from the territory. For its part, Hamas seems to be stepping up its guerrilla tactics of ambushes and bombings targeting Israeli soldiers in Gaza, but the group has not been able to meaningfully defend the territory and its population from Israeli attacks.
Media reports in recent months have revealed sporadic demonstrations in Gaza against Hamas, suggesting that some Palestinians are fed up with the group and its actions. But according to recent polling, Hamas remains broadly popular among Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank. The unprecedented scale of Israeli action has not yet exploded the assumptions in my original analysis.
Hamas’s relative power cannot simply be measured the same way one would measure the military balance between Israel and its state rivals. In contests between states, the military balance between opponents is of paramount importance. Their militaries usually engage in direct, large-scale battles to take and hold territory, control the skies over territory, or secure access to contested territory. The success of these operations is determined by key indicators, such as the numbers of fighters, stocks of weapons, and levels of economic support. If such factors determined the nature of combat between Hamas and Israel, the war would have been over long ago, since Israel far outpaces the group on all the usual indicators of military strength. That the war has continued for nearly two years and Hamas retains sufficient governing authority in Gaza to hide the remaining Israeli hostages and inflict casualties on the Israeli security forces strongly suggests that the true power of Hamas cannot be found in the traditional metrics of the military balance.
THE PERSISTENCE OF HAMAS
Terrorist groups such as Hamas fight asymmetrically. They rarely seek to seize and hold territory and almost never attempt to win pitched military-to-military battles. Instead, these groups seek to impose losses on their opponents in other ways, mostly through guerrilla operations that pick off enemy military personnel in small numbers and over long stretches of time and through attacks against civilians. Most often, they simply want to maximize harm to vulnerable civilian targets. And since they are always weaker than their state rivals in the usual military indicators, terrorist groups expect to suffer great losses as the conflict persists. As a result, the most telling power of Hamas is its ability to replace the fighters it loses with new ones. Estimates of Hamas’s fighting strength bear out this logic. According to the Israeli military, in early 2025, Hamas had as many as 23,000 fighters, a figure roughly the same as an Israeli estimate of the group’s size before October 7, 2023.
Hamas can recruit new fighters because it still enjoys support. Surveying public opinion is the best way to measure how much support exists among Palestinians for Hamas. The best available surveys conducted among Palestinian populations in Gaza and the West Bank are by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), an independent, nonprofit survey center established in 1993 following the Oslo accords that collaborates with Israeli scholars and institutions.
My previous June 2024 analysis relied on the PSR surveys from 2023 and 2024. When recent surveys from May 2025 are added to the mix, a striking finding emerges: Hamas has more support among Palestinians today than it did before October 7. Hamas is now, for instance, substantially more popular than its main political rival, the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which dominates the Palestinian Authority. In September 2023, Fatah enjoyed a four-point lead over Hamas (26 to 22 percent). In polling from May 2025, Hamas now enjoys an 11-point lead over Fatah (32 to 21 percent).
The shift toward Hamas is particularly acute in the West Bank, where support for Hamas has more than doubled. There, support for armed attacks on Israeli civilians has risen from 48 percent in June 2023 to 59 percent in May 2025.
In Gaza, support for Hamas has remained flat, despite the enormous suffering brought on the territory in the wake of Hamas’s October 2023 attack. In September 2023, Hamas had a 13-point lead over Fatah in Gaza (38 to 25 percent), and in May 2025, the numbers were almost the same: Hamas held a 12-point edge over Fatah (37 to 25 percent). The one sign that the Israeli campaign may have changed some views in Gaza is the drop in support among Gazans for armed attacks on Israeli civilians, which fell from 67 percent in September 2023 to 37 percent in May 2025.
But the polling suggests that Israel has not succeeded in severing the connection between Gazans and Hamas. Far from dwindling, support for Hamas has grown or remained the same, and the willingness of Palestinians to attack Israeli civilians remains high enough to satisfy Hamas’s recruiting needs, despite the most brutal punishment campaign by a Western democracy in history. For Israel’s security, the tragic reality is that Hamas likely retains the key asset that could allow it to carry out another major attack down the road: vast numbers of fighters willing to fight and die for the cause.
Hamas’s abiding popularity could be a factor in wider violence beyond Gaza. With Israeli forces stepping up raids on Palestinian refugee camps and settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, the region is now a powder keg. The West Bank is home to 2.7 million Palestinians and 670,000 Israeli settlers living in proximity. Recent Israeli plans to expand settlements in the West Bank and rhetoric from far-right figures calling for the territory’s annexation will likely add fuel to this potential fire.
Israel’s announced intention to seize control of at least 75 percent of Gaza and then confine Gazans to a small portion of territory won’t succeed in divorcing the population from Hamas. As Palestinians are driven into a small corner of the enclave, Hamas will just move with them; this plan is no more likely to defeat Hamas than were the previous population transfers that forced people from area to area inside Gaza. Indeed, such Israeli actions will cause more suffering among civilians—and produce more terrorists. Israel could go further still, expelling Gazans into the Sinai Desert, but such a drastic measure would stoke the possibility of future retributive violence targeting Israelis. And most damaging for long-term Israeli security, throwing Gazans out of the territory would leave Israel open to accusations of engaging in ethnic cleansing, undermining any moral case for supporting the country.
Military operations that, intentionally or not, result in historic levels of civilian deaths are ultimately leading to a more dangerous situation for Israel, making it a less desirable home for Jews and a more likely target for those seeking revenge. Instead, Israel should establish a new security perimeter between Israeli civilian population centers and the Palestinians in Gaza, allowing Gazans enough space to rebuild their lives, letting humanitarian and economic aid to flow into the territory unimpeded, and working with international allies to foster alternative political arrangements to Hamas or Israeli control in Gaza.
THE STRATEGIC COSTS OF IMMORAL ACTIONS
Since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, international support for the country has been based in significant part on the recognition that Jews were the victims of the worst genocide in history. The war in Gaza, however, has seen a swelling tide of condemnation of Israel for committing intentional harm to civilians, mass atrocities, and even genocide. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants that require some 125 countries, including France and the United Kingdom, to detain Israel’s prime minister and other members of Israel’s cabinet. Even within Israel, prominent voices are calling for a course correction: former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has declared that Israel’s actions in Gaza are tantamount to a “war crime,” arguing that “what we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: the indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.” As Israel becomes an international pariah and faces stiffening resistance to its rule in Gaza, the historic scale of its punishment of civilians is only jeopardizing the country’s long-term security.
Many Western countries have already begun to make moves to chastise Israel, including by joining much of the rest of the world in formally recognizing a Palestinian state, a step that could lead to large-scale humanitarian intervention in Gaza and economic sanctions on Israel. The United States will likely not follow that path, but U.S. President Donald Trump is mercurial. He has already contradicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and insisted that the starvation of Gaza must end. Rifts within Trump’s base are widening over Israel. U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a leading hard-right Republican, declared that Israel is in fact committing genocide in Gaza, borrowing from rhetoric heard more often on the left. A tactical alliance could grow in the United States between elements of the far right and the far left that seek to roll back U.S. support for Israel.
Israel is the most militarily powerful country in the Middle East and has scored numerous victories over its opponents in recent years. But it is also a tiny country surrounded by rivals. And it needs close relations with major Western democracies to ensure the viability of its economy. Those relations could be tested and strained as Israel continues waging the worst campaign of civilian punishment ever performed by a Western democracy, a campaign that has not come close to eliminating Hamas and has given Israel more adversaries and left it more isolated. Israeli leaders must decide whether their ongoing immoral actions in Gaza are really worth the costs to their country’s future.
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