Far better than almost any other nations in a state of war, actually. Civilian to combatant death ratio was about 1:1 in the latest 2014 war, 4 times better than the usual modern wars involving first-world nations.
What a war it was indeed. Aerial bombardment of a walled city. A rocket launched from Gaza injures a few people in Israel; a bomb (no need to mention phosphorous wink wink) dropped from a state-of-the-art fighter jet destroys an entire city block.
And when Israel finally decided that it was time for the "mighty" IDF ground forces to enter the stage... nothing really happened. The rockets just continued to be launched from Gaza for a whole month. It was a really amusing "war" to watch in my opinion :D
I'm no military expert, so I don't have one. Scratch that, I do. Allow aid to reach the million or so civilians in Gaza instead of choking it from all sides.
What I do know is that Israel was forced to agree on a ceasefire with a a bunch of "terrorists". Quite hilarious.
Aid is reaching them everyday, both from Israel and Egypt checkpoints. They're also trading with both countries quite a lot. You don't think that this "siege" word actually means a blockade, do you?
The only thing that is required to be smuggled are rockets.
Really now. Please don't speak about issues you have no clue about. According to the Jerusalem Post, "Egyptian authorities have kept the border crossing almost totally closed" since mid-2013 [1]. Now, if Egypt's crossing is closed, do you think Israel would keep theirs open? Hmm. Read [2] for more juicy details.
Conclusion: Gaza is completely isolated from the outside world. 1 million+ citizens in a confined space. Long live Israel.
"Completely isolated from the outside world"? Not even close. 3000 truckloads a week. And growing.
> Now, if Egypt's crossing is closed, do you think Israel would keep theirs open? Hmm.
You seem to imply something here; as if Egypt-Gaza relations should be expected to better than Israel-Gaza. Why?
> 1 million+ citizens in a confined space.
Yeah, this is called a "country". Exactly what Hamas is, if you believe it, wants. And this "barrier" would be called a "border" then. You know, like countries have.
How can someone stop doing something he's not doing? These wars were started by Hamas, attacking Israel. These attacks never stop, and haven't stopped since the end of the last war, there's a rocket landing in Israel wvery week or two. Thankfully, these attacks are not heavy enough for full response, but blaming these wars for someone else than a terrorist organization that is trying to provoke a conflict is ridiculous.
You say "rockets" and people conjure up the image of a smart bomb or modern American military missile.
The "rockets" that Hamas fires from gaza are little more than homebrew model rockets. They are scarcely larger or more powerful than the kind ameature models that rocketry enthusiasts fly. For some time now the Hamas rockets rarely even carry explosive payloads, and are only meant as decoys to trigger the Isreali Iron Dome defense system in a battle of attrition-- Iron Dome tracks and intercepts the rockets with more modern projectiles of it's own-- I've seen estimates that each Iron Dome response costs upwards of $20,000. I doubt Hamas has to spend more than $300 for each decoy.
This is not acceptable provocation for the kind of warfare that IDF routinely makes against Gazans.
> The "rockets" that Hamas fires from gaza are little more than homebrew model rockets.
Quite the contrary. A lot of them are not home-made, they are imported from countries like Syria and Iran. Sometimes, they end up even with Russian made rockets. And they're getting bigger, and have a wider range, each year. Here's the infographic: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00731/inlin...
I think you made an honest mistake because a lot of rockets are called "Qassam" by the media, while the name itself denotes the most basic, home-made rocket variety.
> This is not acceptable provocation for the kind of warfare that IDF routinely makes against Gazans.
No, IDF response is an adequate minimum. You're talking about the "battle of attrition", and you're right; however, you're thinking about money, while the deal is about overall capacity. Iron Dome does it job well, but it has a limited output. When it's out, it means that those rockets will start killing people, and that's exactly the point when IDF starts destroying rocket stockpiles and infrastructure. It's tragic, because despite all IDF's efforts, it means that innocent people will die — but at that point, lack of action would lead to a larger amount of civilian deaths.
> against Gazans
And, finally, this depiction of sides of the conflict is a great demonstration of your bias. The war is started by Hamas, who wasn't elected democratically and is holding power by extreme totalitarian violence. IDF, on the other hand, is a military force of a democratic country. Unlike US or other first-world country, all israelis go to the army, so IDF is even more representative of society as a whole. So, "warfare that israelis make against al-Qassam Brigades" would be a much more fair description.
And when Israel finally decided that it was time for the "mighty" IDF ground forces to enter the stage... nothing really happened. The rockets just continued to be launched from Gaza for a whole month. It was a really amusing "war" to watch in my opinion :D