It only took a quick skim to find the paragraph where the adherence of Israel to LOAC is just stated as a fact, with zero underpinning analysis:
Israel’s adheres to the accepted norms and rules that make up the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC)
Although if you have your own unique definitions on LOAC I guess you can make any military action fit:
Where civilians or civilian locations are involved in hostilities they can lose their protected status, and subject to the concept of proportionality, become legitimate military targets or, where such persons or objects are not legitimate targets according to the law, become accepted collateral damage. Adherence to these rules cannot be determined by considering the effects of an attack or relative casualty figures between belligerents in a conflict.
Meanwhile, back in the real world the actual LOAC states:
You must always clearly distinguish between combatants and civilians or the civilian population as such. Combatants may of course be attacked unless they are out of action, i.e. they are hors de combat. Civilians are protected from attack but lose that protection whenever they take a direct part in hostilities for the time of their participation. Similarly, you must always distinguish between military objectives which can be attacked and civilian objects which must be respected.
When military objectives are attacked, civilians and civilian objects must be spared from incidental or collateral damage to the maximum extent possible. Incidental damage must not be excessive in relation to the direct and concrete military advantage you anticipate from your operations. Excessive use of force quite clearly violates the law of armed conflict.
I suspect the authors are on mind-bending drugs. At no stage do civilian
locations become 'hostile' and in any case hostile civilian personnel only become targets for their time of participation. The idea that you can claim lawful 'proportionality' when you have absolved yourself from considering the effects of an attack is utterly preposterous.
