Dahiya Doctrine

Al-Dahiya is the southern suburb of Beirut that Israeli aircraft reduced to rubble during the 2006 war with Hizbullah. The doctrine takes its name from what was done there and generalises it. The United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict — the Goldstone Mission — set out its provenance in its report of September 2009, document A/HRC/12/48, at paragraphs 1194 to 1199.

The Mission quoted Major General Gadi Eisenkot, then chief of Israel’s Northern Command and later chief of the general staff, describing the doctrine in October 2008: “What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. […] We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases. […] This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved.” The Mission emphasised that “General Eisenkot used the language quoted above while he was in active service in a senior command position and clarified that this was not a theoretical idea but an approved plan.”

Two further formulations from senior Israeli figures were recorded alongside it. Major General (Ret.) Giora Eiland argued in October 2008 that in another war with Hizbullah the objective must be “the elimination of the Lebanese military, the destruction of the national infrastructure and intense suffering among the population… Serious damage to the Republic of Lebanon, the destruction of homes and infrastructure, and the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people are consequences that can influence Hizbollah’s behaviour more than anything else.” A month earlier Colonel (Ret.) Gabriel Siboni had written that on an outbreak of hostilities “the IDF will need to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy’s actions and the threat it poses,” a response aimed at “inflicting damage and meting out punishment.”

The legal significance of these statements lies in what they do to the categories on which the law of armed conflict rests. International humanitarian law permits attacks on military objectives and prohibits attacks expected to cause civilian harm excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage. A doctrine that redescribes “civilian villages” as “military bases,” and that treats suffering among the population as the mechanism by which pressure is applied, does not argue with the proportionality rule; it removes the terms the rule operates on. The Goldstone Mission concluded from what it observed on the ground in Gaza in 2008–09 that the strategy set out in these writings appeared to have been the one applied.

The doctrine’s vocabulary recurs. In its order of 26 January 2024 the International Court of Justice recorded statements by serving Israeli ministers describing the population of Gaza in collective terms — an “entire nation out there that is responsible,” a population that would “not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world” — and ordered Israel to prevent and punish direct and public incitement to commit genocide. The line from a general’s account of an approved plan to a court’s provisional measures is short, and it is documented at both ends.

Sources

• Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, A/HRC/12/48, 25 September 2009 — paragraphs 1194–1199 (PDF)
• International Court of Justice, order on provisional measures of 26 January 2024, South Africa v. Israel (PDF, UN Question of Palestine)