Principle of proportionality

One of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law is the principle of proportionality, which prohibits acts that will cause excessive injury, in relation to the military advantage anticipated from the acts, to people who are not taking part in the hostilities and to their property. Thus, to prevent unnecessary injury to civilians on the other side, the parties must minimize the use of force necessary to achieve the military objective.

This principle also applies to Israel's policy discussed in this document. According to the commentary published by the ICRC on article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, destruction of property is illegal if the occupier does not "try to keep a sense of proportion in comparing the military advantages to be gained with the damage done." This prohibition applies even in a situation of military necessity.

Examination of the circumstances in which Israel implemented its policy - the extreme magnitude of the house demolitions, the uprooting of trees, the destruction of agricultural fields, and the manner in which Israel chose to implement its policy - clearly and unequivocally indicate that these contentions are baseless. The injury to the civilian population was excessive in proportion to the military advantage that Israel ostensibly sought to achieve by implementing this policy.

One of the primary requirements of proportionality states that actions that will injure civilians may be taken only after alternative acts, whose resultant injury would be less, are considered and then rejected because they will not achieve the necessary military advantage. Israel ignores this rule and uses means whose injury to civilians is extremely severe. Furthermore, Israel declares that destruction of the agricultural land and demolition of houses constitute a future policy. Declaring these acts a policy indicates the lack of an intention to consider alternatives before carrying out the acts of destruction.

The IDF forces destroyed entire residential neighborhoods, claiming that, under some of the houses, tunnels had been dug through which weapons were being smuggled. In other cases, the army destroyed dozens of houses on the grounds that Palestinians were firing from the area at IDF soldiers. The demolition of houses based on this claim cannot be deemed to meet the conditions required by the principle of proportionality.

Israel destroyed crops and agricultural land, and uprooted fruit trees on the grounds that from these fields Palestinians fired at soldiers and settlers. In some of the cases, the IDF forces destroyed tomato and squash fields, in which people could not hide. The army's actions caused long-term, and in some instances irreversible, damage to the land, and affected the income of thousands of people for many years to come. Destruction of this kind certainly cannot be considered to be in accordance with the principle of proportionality.

Israel's sweeping restrictions on the movement of Palestinians since the beginning of the intifada has created an unprecedented economic depression among residents of the Occupied Territories. Because of the severe prohibition on Palestinians from working in Israel and on Palestinian movement within the Occupied Territories, the agricultural sector has become one of the few sources of income for many Palestinians. As a result, damaging the agricultural sector at this time causes especially grave harm.

The argument that Israel breached the principle of proportionality when it implemented its policy in the Gaza Strip is supported by the comments made by Brigadier General Dov Zadka, head of the Civil Administration. In his response to a question from a reporter from B'Mahaneh [the IDF magazine] whether Israel did not overdo the demolitions that it carried out in the Occupied Territories, Zadka stated:

In Gaza - very much so. I think they did several things that were excessive. After the events in Aley Sinai and Dugit, they executed an extremely massive clearance in what they called "the northern sector." They uprooted hundreds of dunam of strawberries and orchards and greenhouses, and I think that wasn't right... In Judea and Samaria, too, there are places that we haven't acted properly. Sometimes I approve a specific scope of clearing, but when I go to the field I find a degree of hyper-activity by the troops... Did we overdo it in certain places? To tell the truth - yes. For sure. You approve the removal of thirty trees, and the next day you see that they removed sixty trees. The soldier or the company commander on the site got carried away. There have been such cases, and we must not ignore them.