“Our job is preventing terror. Yet we face a tragic dilemma. Whatever we decide when fighting terror, some innocent people are going to get hurt.” Amos Yadlin, former deputy commander of the Israel Air Force, now head of the Institute for National Security Studies, writing in 2004.

When Israel left Gaza in 2005 the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said: “We desire a life living side-by-side, in understanding and peace. Our goal [in disengaging] is that the Palestinians will be able to live in dignity and freedom in an independent state.”

The Hamas bomb-making chief Muhammed Deif replied instantly: “I thank Allah the exalted for his support in the Jihad of our people. To the Zionists we promise that tomorrow all of Palestine will become hell for you.”

And he was true to his word: as soon as Israel withdrew. Hamas quadrupled its rocket fire into Israel. In this way the terms were set for the Israel-Hamas relationship, and the appalling suffering of civilians on both sides.

The rockets held by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have become ever more potent: from the short-range and crude Qassams fired into Sderot in 2005 to the sophisticated Iranian-supplied Fajr-5, R160 and M-302 rockets of 2014, capable of reach Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Zichron Ya’akov, 100 miles from Gaza.

Israel, then, cannot avoid grappling with an excruciating dilemma: how to use force against the terrorists of Gaza, without that force endangering the civilians of Gaza. It has developed three responses. None are foolproof.

First, intelligence. Each target is selected following long-term intelligence efforts indicating a direct link to terrorist infrastructure. I have sat with IAF spotters responsible for monitoring Gaza from the skies and seen how intimate and “real-time” is the relationship between intelligence and the use of force, and how dedicated those young soldiers are to getting it right. (The opening of the documentary The Gatekeepers captured this work and the dilemmas it throws up.)

Read the article in full at the Daily Telegraph.