On 5 August 2022, Israel launched yet another attack on the Gaza Strip, killing 33 Palestinians, including nine minors and three women, in three days. B’Tselem’s investigation found that at least 17 of the people killed, including all the minors and women, were not participating in the hostilities. Another 15 Palestinians, nine of them minors, were killed by rockets or mortar bombs that landed in the Gaza Strip and were fired by Palestinian militants at Israel during the fighting.

Israeli decisionmakers know that the policy of bombarding Gaza from the air is what leads to these horrific outcomes, time and again. Yet, as in the past, it is highly unlikely that anyone will be held accountable for the killings – the pilots and soldiers on the ground and their commanders, the legal counselors who sanctioned the policy, or the military and political decisionmakers who shaped it.