‘Cheap stupid bombs’: What’s the Dahiya doctrine in Israel’s war on Gaza?

Since October 7, Israel has launched a scorched-earth military campaign in Gaza following Hamas' unprecedented cross-border attacks, pulverising the besieged Palestinian enclave with a bombing blitzkrieg.

The continuous and indiscriminate bombings have killed more than 20,000 Palestinian people, most of them children and women, and turned the enclave into a rubble-strewn landscape from hell.

At the heart of Israel's attempts to annihilate Gaza and in the staggering number of civilian deaths lies a military philosophy known as the Dahiya doctrine that junks every laid down norm of warfare, experts and analysts say.

"At the core of the Israeli Dahiya doctrine is the idea of causing damage rather than accuracy (in target selection)," says Dr Ahron Bregman, who served in the Israeli army for six years and is now a lecturer at King's College. He was also a former parliamentary assistant to the Knesset.

"That's why at least 40 percent of the bombs Israeli planes dropped on Gaza are dumb bombs," he tells TRT World, referring to free-falling explosive devices which do not have any guidance system and hence are highly inaccurate.

This also explains the staggering number of civilian deaths in Gaza – a result of Israel not having any actual intent to protect civilians, including the prevention of aid delivery to the injured.

Dr David Murphy, lecturer of military history at Maynooth University, likens Israel's war to bombing campaigns during World War II, aimed at destroying cities to make civilian populations rise and turn against their governments.

"However, what we have seen in Gaza is the end point of this paradigm of 'the war in cities', since there are no survival options left for civilians… even to take shelter in any UN, Red Crescent centres, or hospitals," he tells TRT World.

Doctrine of death

The Lebanon suburb Dahiya (also pronounced Dahieh), located in southern Beirut, was at the centre of Israel's military operations in 2006. Israel argued that it was a stronghold of Hezbollah.

The Israeli military flattened the whole neighbourhood of Dahiya as a punishment to make the population stop supporting Hezbollah.

The doctrine justifies asymmetric warfare, destruction of civilian infrastructure, collective punishment and the use of disproportionate force.

"What happened in Dahiya, and operationalised as the Dahiya doctrine, is a complete disregard of international law… it violates two key provisions, proportionality and distinction," Rashid Khalidi, Professor of History at Columbia University, tells TRT World.

The then-Israeli military commander, Gadi Eizenkot, had said that all the villages of the Dahiya neighbourhood were military bases from Israel's perspective.

That has been Israel's policy to a certain extent in Gaza as well, Professor Khalidi says.

Experts have highlighted the similarities between Israeli strikes in Dahiya and the ongoing war in Gaza, which claims to target Hamas but makes no distinction between combatants and civilians.

"In the ongoing war, the Israelis define Hamas as the enemy though their actual brutal actions seem to suggest that they regard the Palestinian people as the enemy," Ahron adds.

Dropping dumb bombs on the city also shows the real intent to cause damage, he points out.

According to a recent media report, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence says nearly half of the 29,000 air-to-ground munitions used to attack Gaza have been unguided 'dumb bombs'.

"Why drop an expensive bomb if all you want to do is cause damage and flatten whole neighbourhoods, which could be achieved by a relatively cheap stupid bomb?" Bregman says.

"If you ask the Israelis why it is necessary to flatten whole neighbourhoods, they will tell you that it is necessary in order to protect their troops from snipers and so on. But the truth is that they do it in order to, well, cause damage."

False promises

Even though Israel issued evacuation orders, its airstrikes targeted the so-called 'safe routes' used by civilian convoys.

"Palestinians in Gaza are trapped there, but Israel is still continuing to attack the city where the civilians are," Dr Murphy says.

In urban warfare, which is a very difficult place to minimise civilian casualties, if you keep attacking, it means you are deliberately targeting the civilians, Dr Murphy adds.

Civilians in combat zones also serve the Israeli strategy because the concept behind this is that if they punish the civilian population enough, they are expected to turn against Hamas, he explains.

While Israel does not hesitate to attack hospitals, it also prevents medical supplies from getting into the besieged enclave.

This means destroying the ability for civilians to survive, Murphy says, adding it is quite overt in this case.

Attacking high-value buildings

This is a progression of the Dahiya doctrine and what they were doing before, Professor Khalidi tells TRT World.

Some targets have been attacked simply because they are considered high-value targets without any necessary connection to the war, he explains, citing the examples of the Islamic University of Gaza, the parliament building, the court building, the library, and hospitals.

They even attacked ambulances, he reminds, adding "this is a new level of complete unconcern for international humanitarian law."

"It's very clear that there has been a progression on the part of Israeli planners away from some kind of calculation as between the value of a target as military and the number of civilians who would be killed on occasion," he says.