āYou donāt want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people ā itās very expensive for the country and thereās a shortage [of those bombs],ā one intelligence officer said. Another said the principal question they were faced with was whether the ācollateral damageā to civilians allowed for an attack.
āBecause we usually carried out the attacks with dumb bombs, and that meant literally dropping the whole house on its occupants. But even if an attack is averted, you donāt care ā you immediately move on to the next target. Because of the system, the targets never end. You have another 36,000 waiting.ā
According to conflict experts, if Israel has been using dumb bombs to flatten the homes of thousands of Palestinians who were linked, with the assistance of AI, to militant groups in Gaza, that could help explain the shockingly high death toll in the war.
