Was Gaza’s destruction, high death toll necessary for Israel’s war on Hamas?

Questions grow over whether the civilian deaths and scale of destruction in Gaza were necessary for Israel to achieve its goals.

The debate over the amount of destruction in Gaza continues to grow as more footage emerges from Gaza. A recent video from the Associated Press has been circulating on social media.

It shows the complete destruction of an area of Gaza. This has been seen before. However, each time, one is only given a snippet of the total destruction caused by two years of war.

Each time these videos appear, a vibrant debate breaks out on social media. For those more sympathetic to the Palestinians, the footage is evidence of the horrors of the war.

Ihab Hassan, who describes himself as a human rights activist, wrote “apocalyptic aerial footage from Gaza, nothing left standing, only endless rubble.” Others disagree and replies include references to “FAFO,” which essentially means “mess about, find out.” In essence, this means that the civilians in Gaza deserved to have all their homes destroyed because of the atrocities of Hamas on October 7.

The ”they deserved it” argument is one type of response to the massive destruction and high death toll in the Gaza war. Hamas-run health authorities in Gaza said in late October 2025 that more than 67,000 people were killed in Gaza in the war. Although some argue that these figures are biased due to the fact that Hamas controls the Health Ministry in Gaza, there are no alternative numbers that Israel has put out.

The IDF put out some data in 2024 during the first year of the war. In July 2024, the IDF said, “the forces have eliminated and apprehended approximately 14,000 terrorists. Among the eliminated terrorists are six brigade commanders, over 20 battalion commanders, and approximately 150 company commanders.”

It’s not clear how many more terrorists were killed since then, but it stands to reason that at most it is twice that number, which would be an estimate of some 20-28,000. That still means more than half of those killed in the war are civilians. This has led to a debate about the civilian death toll.

One argument posits that the number of civilians killed in this war is lower than in other conflicts. This tries to break down the civilian death toll to a ratio compared to the number of enemy combatants killed. This macabre math doesn’t tell us that much because the number of Hamas members killed is an estimate, and the overall death toll in Gaza is not known precisely.

IDF believed most of the Hamas battalions in northern Gaza had been dismantled

In the past, the IDF has sometimes exaggerated its estimates of success in Gaza. For instance, the IDF believed most of the Hamas battalions in northern Gaza had been dismantled by December 2023. In August 2025, the IDF had to dismantle, once again, the Hamas battalion in Beit Hanun. In fact, almost all the Hamas battalions in northern Gaza had to be re-defeated, sometimes several times. How could Hamas be at a “breaking point” in northern Gaza in December 2023, but then the IDF had to go back into Gaza City in September 2025?

The same stories were told about Hamas being mostly defeated by April 2024 in all of Gaza. Yet the fact is that the group held on to a lot of areas and was never challenged in key parts of central and northern Gaza. The Rafah Brigade was also declared defeated by July 2024, only to have to be defeated again several times. Members of the brigade are still hiding in tunnels in Rafah.

The reality is that a lot of the information that came out of the Gaza war is incomplete. This makes it hard to draw some conclusions about the casualties and the war.

What is clear is that a large number of civilians were killed. In past Israeli wars it was considered a large number of civilians if hundreds were killed. For instance, in the 2009 Gaza war, this was the case. The fact that estimates say more than 30,000 people were killed in Gaza should require a pause for reflection. Asserting that it’s acceptable because the ratio is “1:1” doesn’t provide a real reflection on the war.

The destruction in Gaza also does not have an easy explanation. If one goes past the “FAFO” argument, which essentially argues “they deserve it,” then the question is whether this level of destruction was necessary. Some arguments say that this is how urban warfare works, because Hamas had snipers in buildings or stored munitions or had tunnel shafts, so that every building had to be destroyed. However, the reality of the fighting is in contrast to this depiction.

While Hamas did use civilian buildings, it was also cleared from many areas of Gaza, only to have those areas handed back to Hamas. For instance, the IDF went into Jabaliya in the first months of the war. Most of the buildings were still standing at this time, although some were damaged. The civilians had been evacuated. Hamas was pushed out of part of the area. Then the IDF left. The IDF returned to Jabaliya several times during the war, each time causing more destruction to re-defeat Hamas.

The destruction in places like Jabaliya wasn’t because Hamas used every building. Had the IDF held the place after first taking it, most of it would have been spared. This is one reason that other urban battlefields have looked different than Gaza. Mosul city, for instance, was the site of a 10-month battle against ISIS. However, to defeat ISIS the Iraqi army did the opposite of the IDF. They called on civilians to move to IDP camps away from ISIS. Then the army cleared the city street by street. They never cleared the areas several times. The US-led coalition stopped doing airstrikes in the dense urban area of western Mosul city because of concerns for civilian casualties. While there were some areas that were badly damaged, Mosul was less damaged than Gaza.

The level of destruction in Gaza was clearly increased in some neighborhoods by the systematic demolition of almost every building. In other areas, the IDF used different tactics. In the Hamad towers area of Khan Younis, the IDF initially went in with a lot of special units and spared the buildings the total ruin that took place in parts of Rafah, for instance.

One theory presented for why high-rise buildings had to be destroyed in September 2025 was the argument that they could be used by Hamas as sniper positions. However, this argument raises questions about why they were not hit with airstrikes early in the war when the IDF first operated in Gaza City. One Israeli official said that destroying the high-rises was a way to “change the skyline” of Gaza. Was it about changing the skyline or because these specific buildings were being used by Hamas? Israel has the precision munitions that can hit targets in a large building, as evidenced by the precision strike in Beirut on November 23.

The theory that whole neighborhoods have to be razed because of the presence of snipers or terrorists is in contrast to how other militaries have fought insurgents. The British Army didn’t raze whole neighborhoods in Northern Ireland to defeat the IRA. The US fighting terrorists in Fallujah didn’t raze the city. This illustrates that the level of destruction in Gaza is not only a feature of urban warfare. On the other hand, it can be a feature of urban war. Berlin and Stalingrad were destroyed in the Second World War. The number of fighters engaged in those battles and the huge death toll is not similar to Gaza. As such it doesn’t seem reasonable to compare the battle for Gaza to the battle for Berlin. Even if it were reasonable, it might be worth asking why the battle for Gaza took two years and the battle for Berlin took a few weeks.

The level of destruction in Gaza is largely a result of the way the war unfolded. The IDF had no clear plan to defeat Hamas or retake Gaza. As such, the first weeks were filled with intense bombardment in October 2023 while IDF reservists re-trained to fight in urban areas. The first year of war included raids into areas to defeat Hamas “battalions” and then withdraw and let Hamas return.

The fact that areas like Zeitoun in Gaza were taken seven times by the IDF meant that the area was destroyed more because of a lack of willingness to secure and hold it. Even today, Hamas has returned to Zeitoun, which raises questions about what the point of the seven operations was to accomplish.

In March 2025, the IDF was asked to shift gears again and return to many areas it had already taken. Politicians called for more destruction of Gaza. Once again, calls for destruction have nothing to do with urban warfare necessities. The campaign from May to July led to more systematic demolition of some areas. Later, in September officials threatened to turn Gaza City into Beit Hanun. Beit Hanun is a town in Gaza near Sderot that was completely razed. The threats to turn Gaza city into Beit Hanun don’t reference military necessity of urban warfare.

The argument that this is just how urban warfare unfolds does not mesh well with the comments about destroying areas of Gaza. It’s also not clear that turning cities into rubble makes the cities safer for troops. In Rafah, the terrorists continue to emerge from tunnels under the rubble. The rubble may be doing more harm than good eventually.

The debate about the destruction and casualties will continue. However, a nuanced look at Gaza reveals that there continue to be more questions than answers about how the war unfolded. Could it have been waged with less destruction and less casualties? It’s likely it could have and it will require more study to get lessons learned from the campaign.