There is no other way to fight this sort of war. What you are saying is that Israel should just surrender because it has no way to fight the militants who are embedded with civilians and civilian infrastructure and the other specific situation of this conflict.
This is not how war works from an international law perspective or otherwise. It's also not how ethics work. It is ethical and moral for Israel to defend its citizens against attack even at the cost of civilian lives on the attacking side. It is moral and ethical for Israel to use force to recover the hostages that were abducted on Oct 7th and to ensure its enemy can't keep attacking its civilians. No other country in the world would do anything different here.
Israel is not targeting civilians. Israel targets the enemy's military. The vast majority of situations where the media portrays Israel as intentionally targeting civilians Israel has a legal military objective. For example the media portrayed Israel as attacking the European hospital when the target was Muhammad Sinwar the head of Hamas in a tunnel by and under the hospital:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/08/middleeast/israel-recovers-mo...
Anti-Israeli media basically just reports Israel attacking hospitals and so if that's where you get your news that might be the picture you get (e.g. 10's of millions of people consuming Al Jazeera content.)
I am not really conflating anyone with anyone. The facts of the story are:
- Hamas is the elected government of Gaza.
- Hamas ran and still runs portions of Gaza and exerts absolute control. Anyone going against it in any way is tortured and/or killed.
- Surveys show broad support amongst Gazans to attacking Israel and to Hamas. The precise numbers vary.
- Civilians were involved in the Oct 7th attacks, looting, killing etc.
- Civilians were also involved in holding Israeli hostages.
- Hamas intentionally blends the line between civilian and militant. A civilian grabs an RPG from a weapons stash, fires it, then becomes a civilian again. A civilian triggers a rocket to be fired at Israeli cities, from civilian infrastructure, and then becomes a civilian again. A civilian building has a tunnel exit where a civilian comes out of a tunnel, fires at Israelis, and then he and the building becomes civilian again. The entirety of the Gaza strip has been built for years to support this sort of warfare.
- To be clear this does not mean that uninvolved civilians are a military target but the civilians in Gaza, very much like civilians in other military conflicts, are impacted by wars and can't magically be removed from the conflict.
- The media seeks to decouple the idea of "Palestinians" (Gaza/Hamas civilians) from "Hamas" as another lever against Israel. This decoupling is mostly impossible. I.e. somehow Israel is responsible for the well being of the Gaza civilians and their government that started this war is not even in areas ruled by the Hamas government.
- Israel provides civilians with early warnings and a chance to evacuate, with areas that are designated as safer (and they are safer despite what the media tells you, just not perfect safety which is impossible in a war), and tries to minimize civilian deaths when going after militants embedded with civilians.
- Israel enables and provides aid to Gaza civilians despite not occupying the territory where they reside. This is mostly unheard of in modern war, e.g. Russia sending food to Ukraine or the other way around or the western allies sending food to ISIL. Hamas steals the food by force and resells it in the markets to raise money or hoards it to support its fighters. Again civilians are certainly impacted but the expectations from Israel here and pressure on it has no other war time precedent that I can think of. Again Israel is expected to wage war here like nobody else does. The media and the UN has been using words like famine and starvation from something like the second week of this long war, mostly as a weapon against Israel. I'm not sure what is a realistic expectation here from Israel and why e.g. when Egypt controlled their Gaza border during the beginning of the war there was no demand from Egypt to provide safe haven for civilians and/or to provide aid. Legally and morally Israel should be allowed to put a total siege on the northern Gaza strip as long as it has told civilians to evacuate and provided them a location in the south to do so - it has done both.
EDIT: So e.g. from news that just came out. Civilians were killed in Nuseirat in the central Gaza strip. The IDF says the target was a militant from the Islamic Jihad but the precision bomb used malfunctioned and fell 10's of meters away from the intended target killing civilians in the area.
It's an extremely dense urban area. Israel uses precision munitions. But they don't always hit their intended targets. Israel conducts dozens, sometimes hundreds, of strikes, a day against military targets.
What would you do if you are Israel? Give the Islamic Jihad and Hamas immunity because they are in civilian urban areas? Withdraw and let them run Gaza again?