The Coming of the Obliteration Doctrine

In this historical view, the "scorched-earth policy" is a longstanding military strategy of destroying everything that allows an enemy military force to fight a war, including critical infrastructure, military and state institutions, buildings, crops, livestock, security and other essential resources. Modern historical examples feature the American Civil War and American Indian Wars, alongside Nazi Germany's war against the Soviet Union. But the Obliteration Doctrine goes further insofar as it aims at either devastating the entire infrastructure of the target population or destroys it to achieve "voluntary" mass displacement, dispossession and, ultimately, extermination.

Nonetheless, the deployment of scorched-earth policy against non-combatants is banned under the 1977 Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949.

Another historical component of the Obliteration Doctrine is "collective punishment," typically imposed on a group or entire community of people for acts allegedly committed by one or more of its members. Since collective punishment targets individuals who are not responsible for the perpetrated acts, it undermines modern legal systems, which restrict criminal liability to individuals. Yet, it has been widely deployed through history, from late medieval Florence to American Civil War, the Nazi occupation of Poland and Yugoslavia and postwar anti-colonial liberation struggles.

Like scorched-earth policy, collective punishment is prohibited in both international and non-international armed conflicts.

The third historical element of the Obliteration Doctrine is "civilian victimization," or the purposeful use of violence against noncombatants in a conflict. This kind of victimization can feature both lethal—including killings—and non-lethal forms of violence, such as forced expulsion, torture and rape. In civilian victimization, violence is often deployed to foster civilian cooperation and isolate the military adversary by removing civilians from an area, as applied in the U.S. Strategic Hamlet program during the Vietnam War. In the Cold War, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union provided military and financial backing to governments and groups engaging in irregular civil wars that often involved the deployment of violence to control civilians and territory. More recently, the involvement of major actors has been less direct but remains substantial.

Like scorched-earth policy and collective punishment, civilian victimization is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

In its contemporary form, the Obliteration Doctrine accounts for the decimation of urban infrastructure and the genocidal atrocities in the Gaza Strip between 2023-25. It was first tested in 2006 in Dahiya, a Shia Muslim enclave in Beirut. Gadi Eisenkot, the former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff and its architect, pledged it would be used "in the next war." Over the next 17 years, the international community did nothing to preempt the deployment of the doctrine. The result has been genocide.

The Historical Scale

Since the postwar era, these old forms of obliteration have been coupled with largely indiscriminate area bombardment. In Gaza, it set a historical precedent.

In principle, aerial warfare should comply with the laws of war, which regulate the conditions for initiating war (jus ad bellum) and the conduct of hostilities (jus in bello). In particular, aerial operations should comply with the principles of humanitarian law: that is, of military necessity, objective—also known as suitability—and proportionality.

Among other factors, compliance is critical to protecting victims of conflict and refraining from attacks on protected persons, such as medical personnel. In practice, these laws were often violated during World War II when bombs were dropped over broad target areas. In "carpet bombing," a large area bombardment proceeded to damage every part of the selected zone.

The first aerial carpet bombing was the bombardment of Barcelona in March 1938, which killed 1,300 and wounded 2,000. It was preceded by the bombing of Guernica by the same belligerents in April 1937.

If carpet bombing refers to the indiscriminate bombing of an area, "terror bombing" describes intensified bombing aiming to devastate a city or a large part of it. Based on Article 51 of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, carpet bombing has been considered a war crime since 1977, conveniently after the Vietnam War.

Taking place in mid-February 1945, the Dresden bombing was carried out by British and American forces, who dropped up to 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices, resulting in a firestorm and about 25,000 killed. In Hamburg, the Allied bombing between 1939-45 caused 9,000 tons of bombs to be dropped and killed an estimated 37,000 people. In London, the German bombing campaign known as "the Blitz" endured from September 1940 to May 1941. More than 30,000 tons of bombs were dropped, and some 43,000 people lost their lives.

By late April 2024, Israel dropped over 70,000 tons of bombs over Gaza, surpassing the World War II bombing of Dresden, Hamburg and London combined.

The bombing of Gaza has been historical in terms of the scale of bombs and the number of people killed, injured and maimed. According to local authorities, almost 90% of Gaza has been destroyed by more than 200,000 tons of explosives dropped on the Gaza Strip. Most estimates put the figure between 150,000 and 200,000 tons, equivalent to 10-13 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima.