In two months, the war in Gaza has produced a shocking death toll, although what is particularly striking is the great disproportion between those killed on the Palestinian side, more than 16,000, compared to 85 Israeli soldiers, practically 200 to 1. This difference, which has very little history in armed conflicts since the end of the Second World War, responds, according to the experts consulted, to a deliberate strategy on the part of the Israeli armed forces, which researchers call risk transfer and which Western countries have been using in various war scenarios in recent decades.
In the data on fatalities provided by the United Nations, based on information from the Palestinian authorities in Gaza, the only one available, the weight of civilians is very high. Although the Israeli authorities claim to be sticking to military objectives, of those 16,000 people, 70% would be, according to the UN, women and children. An undetermined, but minority, number of the total deaths would correspond to members of Hamas. Even if these deaths were substantially corrected downwards from other sources that do not exist today, the disproportion would continue to be evident.
The rate of deaths is extraordinarily high compared to other recent conflicts, such as the invasion of Iraq, where almost 8,000 fatal casualties among civilians are attributed to US troops for all of 2003, the first full year of that war. In the case of Afghanistan, US military operations directly caused the death of more than 12,000 civilians, but in twenty years of war. The North American forces recorded almost 500 deaths in the first case and 2,400 in the second.
The high population density of Gaza is, without a doubt, a factor that contributes to the numerous civilian deaths, but it does not justify the great disproportion between both sides. It must be clarified, however, that these data do not take into account the civilians murdered by Hamas on October 7 since the massacre occurred prior to the mobilization of the Israeli army. The reason for the difference between fatalities on both sides is found in a mechanism known as risk transfer, used more and more frequently by Western armies since the Vietnam War, especially in urban areas.
The sociologist Martin Shaw, researcher at the Institut Barcelona Estudis Internacionals, points out that “risk transfer occurs when armies carry out war with the premise of avoiding casualties among their own forces, but in such a way that they cause them disproportionately among civilians.” With this strategy, Western countries try to alleviate the pressure of their respective public opinions caused by the loss of lives in their ranks.
From this perspective, Shaw, who published the book New Western Way of War: Risk Transfer and Its Crisis in Iraq in 2005, studied Western campaigns. in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. In them, massive bombings and the use of remote weapons met the objective of obtaining military control, but with a high cost in terms of human lives among civilians. In his opinion, only the battle of Mariupol (2022), within the framework of the Ukrainian war, with its approximately 20,000 fatalities, can be compared in contemporary times to that of Gaza in this regard.
This sociologist does not cite it, but possibly one of the most notable precedents for this strategy took place at the end of World War II, when the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to prevent a land invasion that would have had a devastating impact. enormous cost to his army. As is well known, in return, casualties occurred among Japanese civilians.
Professor Yagil Levy, an expert in civil-military relations at the Open University of Israel, has studied risk transfer in the specific case of previous Israeli operations in Gaza. In the 2014 offensive, the UN human rights council already observed that “the protection of Israeli soldiers significantly influenced the conduct of the army, sometimes ignoring any concern to minimize civilian casualties.”
But on this occasion, in Levy’s opinion, the war goes further than that and other conflicts, because “it is an extreme form of risk transfer.” As this sociologist explains, faced with the need to conquer Gaza through a ground operation in a very dangerous urban area, the Israeli army has used this strategy in three steps: “first, an air attack for three weeks that has damaged the military infrastructure enemy, but at the cost of the lives of thousands of civilians; second, encouraging the population of northern Gaza to flee; and third, a ground operation made easier because the area is already free of civilians.” “This – he concludes – explains the small number of Israeli casualties compared to the thousands of civilians in Gaza.”
Are these types of strategies effective in the long term? It does not seem that the balance of Iraq or Afghanistan was optimal. And regarding Gaza, in Levy’s opinion it could turn against Israel, because the high number of civilian casualties implies the risk of an international investigation and, “more importantly, because the death and destruction make future attempts at reconciliation difficult, given the escalation.” of hatred among the population.” Martin Shaw, for his part, warns that in the case of the Russians and Mariupol it can work because Russia is a large state. But the current case, which in his opinion even goes beyond the concept of risk transfer, is different, because Israel is a small country and needs regional stability. “If Israel manages to take over Gaza and expel many of the Palestinians, in the medium term it could provoke a regional and global reaction that could threaten its very existence,” he says.
