Hamas Knew Gazans Would Pay the Price. Israel Built Systems to Reduce It.

The argument over civilian deaths in Gaza is often reduced to casualty numbers. But numbers alone cannot answer one of the most important questions of the war: what did each side actually do about the risk to Palestinian civilians?

The documented record reveals a striking contrast.

Senior Hamas leaders publicly acknowledged that their strategy would impose an enormous price on Palestinians. They spoke openly about sacrifice, martyrdom and the political value created by the conflict.

Israel, meanwhile, built an extensive military system specifically intended to identify civilians, estimate potential collateral harm, warn populations, evacuate combat zones, alter weapons and timing, and sometimes cancel attacks.

Those Israeli safeguards did not always work. Some failed catastrophically. Their existence does not make every Israeli strike lawful.

But failures of a civilian protection system are very different from having no such system at all.

Hamas Knew Gaza Would Pay a Price

One of the clearest statements came from senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad just weeks after October 7.

Speaking to Lebanon's LBCI on October 24, 2023, Hamad promised that Hamas would repeat the attack.

“The Al Aqsa Flood was only the first time; there will be a second, a third and a fourth.”

Then came the crucial part.

“Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are prepared to pay it. We are known as a people of martyrs, and we are proud to offer martyrs.”

Hamad did not explicitly say that Palestinian civilians should die. That distinction matters.

But he did explicitly say Hamas intended to repeat an operation that had already triggered a devastating war, while acknowledging that Palestinians would pay the price.

Former Hamas political leader Khaled Mashal made a similar argument.

In an October 19, 2023 interview with Al Arabiya, Mashal said:

“We know very well the consequences of our October 7 operation.”

He then framed those consequences as part of national liberation:

“No people is liberated without sacrifices.”

Again, this is not proof that Hamas's objective was to maximize Palestinian deaths.

It is something different, and still significant: senior Hamas leaders publicly acknowledged the foreseeable consequences of their strategy and characterized Palestinian losses as sacrifices that had to be accepted.

October 7 Was Not About Making Gaza Better

Khalil al Hayya, another senior Hamas leader, was unusually explicit about what October 7 was intended to accomplish.

In a November 2023 interview with The New York Times, al Hayya said Hamas knew the Israeli reaction to an operation powerful enough to change the regional equation would be “big.”

He also rejected the idea that October 7 was primarily about improving conditions inside Gaza.

“Hamas's goal is not to run Gaza and to bring it water and electricity and such.”

And:

“This battle was not because we wanted fuel or laborers. It did not seek to improve the situation in Gaza.”

Instead, he said Hamas had succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue “back on the table.”

That matters because it reveals Hamas's hierarchy of priorities.

The leadership knowingly chose a strategy designed to transform the regional conflict, understanding that the response would be severe, rather than one primarily aimed at improving the daily lives of Gaza's residents.

“We Need This Blood”

Perhaps the most disturbing statement came from then Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on October 26, 2023.

Speaking about Palestinian children, women and elderly people killed in Gaza, Haniyeh said:

“We need this blood so that it awakens in us the revolutionary spirit, so that it awakens in us determination, so that it awakens in us defiance and moving forward.”

The context is important.

In the same speech, Haniyeh called on governments and people around the world to pressure Israel to stop the bombing. He was not explicitly asking Israel to kill Palestinian civilians.

But neither should the other half of his message be erased.

Haniyeh was openly describing Palestinian bloodshed as something capable of strengthening revolutionary determination and mobilizing the wider struggle.

That is political exploitation of civilian suffering in the Hamas leadership's own words.

Tunnels for Fighters, Not a Public Shelter Network

The contrast becomes even more tangible underground.

Hamas spent years constructing a vast tunnel network beneath Gaza. Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar himself claimed in 2021 that the network extended more than 500 kilometres.

The tunnels included reinforced passages, electricity, ventilation, communications, command areas, weapons storage and facilities capable of protecting Hamas personnel from Israeli air attack.

Then, during an October 2023 RT Arabic interview, senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk was asked an obvious question.

If Hamas had built hundreds of kilometres of tunnels, why had it not built shelters for Gaza's civilians?

Abu Marzouk answered:

“We built the tunnels because we had no other way to protect ourselves from being targeted and killed. The tunnels are intended to protect us from the aircraft, and we fight from inside them.”

He then argued that responsibility for Gaza's refugees rested with the United Nations and that Israel, which Hamas regards as the occupying power, had obligations toward civilians.

The precise legal responsibilities are more complicated than Abu Marzouk suggested.

But his explanation of the tunnels was clear.

Hamas's enormous underground infrastructure was built to protect its fighters and preserve its ability to wage war. Gaza did not have a remotely comparable public bomb shelter network for ordinary residents.

Hamas Also Increased Civilian Exposure

There is independent evidence that Palestinian armed groups repeatedly operated from civilian environments.

Amnesty International documented rocket fire from residential areas and military activity near civilian buildings during earlier Gaza wars.

UN investigators documented weapons stored in vacant UNRWA schools, although the responsible Palestinian faction could not always be identified as Hamas specifically.

US intelligence later concluded that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad used Al Shifa Hospital and sites beneath it for military purposes, including command activity, weapons storage and holding some hostages.

Hamas controlled authorities also publicly discouraged civilians from following Israel's October 2023 evacuation order from northern Gaza.

That does not automatically prove the legal crime of human shielding.

The distinction matters.

Operating from civilian areas, discouraging evacuation and increasing civilian exposure can all be established without claiming that Hamas deliberately positioned every civilian as a shield.

But those actions still increased the danger to Gaza's population.

What Israel Does Before Many Strikes

Israel's targeting system operates very differently.

For many planned attacks, Israeli forces use intelligence to identify a military target and determine whether civilians are nearby.

The process can involve aerial surveillance, signals intelligence, cellphone information, building data, human intelligence and historical targeting information.

Planners then estimate the likely effects of the proposed weapon and expected civilian presence.

Different weapons, explosive yields, angles of attack, timing and warning procedures can be considered.

Military lawyers advise commanders on distinction, proportionality, precautions and protected sites.

Higher expected civilian harm can require higher level approval.

Surveillance may continue until shortly before the weapon is released.

And pilots or commanders can abort an attack if circumstances change.

Not every battlefield strike goes through the full version of this process. A soldier responding to an immediate threat does not have the same timetable as a preplanned airstrike against a fixed target.

But the institutional system exists.

Israel Calls, Texts, Drops Leaflets and Moves Civilians

Israel has also developed one of the world's most extensive warning systems for civilians living inside an active battlefield.

It has used Arabic telephone calls, SMS messages, prerecorded voice messages, leaflets, radio announcements, social media, evacuation maps and numbered geographic zones.

During the war, Israel ordered huge civilian evacuations before major ground operations.

In November 2023, Israel established localized pauses and evacuation corridors from northern Gaza.

UN monitoring independently documented tens of thousands of civilians using those routes.

Before the 2024 Rafah ground operation, Israel issued staged evacuation orders rather than immediately launching a citywide assault. Roughly one million people eventually left Rafah.

None of this made evacuation simple or safe.

Some civilians had nowhere adequate to go. Hospitals, elderly people, disabled residents and families without transport faced enormous difficulties. Areas designated for displaced civilians were themselves later struck when Israel said Hamas targets were present there.

But those limitations do not erase the scale of the effort to move civilians away from combat.

Israel Has Also Cancelled or Changed Attacks

In May 2021, the IDF released operational audio apparently showing an Israeli attack being cancelled because aircrew believed children might be near the target.

A United Nations commission examining the 2014 Gaza conflict also noted Israel's official account that airstrikes had been abandoned when civilians were detected.

Publicly announced evacuation routes and humanitarian pauses impose their own military disadvantages. They sacrifice surprise, reveal where military activity may be limited and can allow enemy fighters to reposition.

Israel has also used smaller munitions in some high risk situations.

In the May 2024 Rafah strike that killed senior Hamas commanders, independent analysis confirmed that Israel used two GBU 39 bombs, each containing roughly 17 kilograms of explosives.

Yet dozens of civilians died when a major fire spread through a nearby camp.

That incident demonstrates something essential.

Precaution does not guarantee success.

Israeli Safeguards Have Failed

Any serious examination of Israeli civilian protection must also acknowledge where those systems broke down.

On April 1, 2024, Israeli forces struck three World Central Kitchen vehicles, killing seven aid workers whose movements had been coordinated with Israel.

Israel investigated, acknowledged serious errors, dismissed officers and reprimanded commanders.

In March 2025, Israeli troops killed 15 Palestinian medics and first responders. Initial claims about the vehicles were contradicted by recovered video. The IDF later acknowledged professional failures and dismissed a deputy commander.

Other strikes caused high civilian death tolls despite warnings, intelligence procedures and precision weapons.

These cases matter.

They show that having civilian protection procedures does not prove that every attack follows those procedures, that every intelligence assessment is correct or that every proportionality decision is lawful.

But they also demonstrate why intent cannot simply be inferred from outcome.

A military can have a genuine system designed to reduce civilian deaths and still make terrible mistakes, use controversial rules or conduct attacks that deserve criminal investigation.

The Difference Is in the Choices

The Gaza war has produced enormous Palestinian suffering.

Nothing Hamas does removes Israel's legal obligations toward civilians. Even when Hamas operates from civilian areas, Israel must still distinguish military targets, assess proportionality and take feasible precautions.

But Hamas's conduct cannot simply disappear from the analysis either.

Its leaders acknowledged that their strategy would exact a Palestinian price.

They embraced sacrifice and martyrdom.

They launched October 7 knowing the Israeli reaction would be major.

They said the operation was not intended to improve everyday life in Gaza but to transform the wider conflict.

They built an extraordinary underground system to protect their fighters while ordinary civilians remained overwhelmingly exposed above ground.

They operated militarily from civilian environments and discouraged at least some civilians from evacuating.

Israel made different institutional choices.

It built systems to estimate civilian presence and collateral harm.

It employed military lawyers.

It used surveillance and smaller weapons.

It called civilians, texted them, dropped leaflets and mapped evacuation zones.

It created corridors and pauses.

And in some cases, attacks were altered or cancelled because civilians were present.

Those systems were imperfect. Sometimes they failed disastrously.

But the difference between a system failing to protect civilians and a strategy that openly accepts civilian sacrifice is not a trivial distinction.

It is one of the most important facts in understanding the war.