Flying over the Gaza Strip, former Israeli Air Force (IAF) pilot Lt.-Col. S. saw first hand the tactics Hamas employs when shelling Israel.

An Israel Air Force F-16 leaving its base to go on a bombing mission over Gaza. [Isranet photo]

Twice he saw Hamas operatives firing into Israel from houses inside a Palestinian town. “They don’t go to the woods or open places. They use houses and shoot from open windows into Israel,” he said in an interview with The CJN.

S., who retired from active service after 23 years, knows most of the IAF’s commanders – former and current – who make the final call on whether to drop a bomb on a terrorist target.

The decision, he said, is not taken lightly and every effort is made to keep civilian losses to a minimum.

The air force expends great energy to make sure only legitimate targets are hit, and he rejects suggestions from Israel’s critics that Palestinians are being massacred in Gaza. In fact, the ratio of civilians to terrorists who are hit has been going down for years. “It’s a major focus of the IAF. I think it has to do with a wider issue and that’s morality,” he said.

“You have people who ask, why are we making the effort? Why can’t we be like other air forces like in Iraq and Afghanistan who hit a target no matter what’s around it? That’s deep in our values. It’s not a slogan.”

S. recently expounded on the IAF’s rules of engagement at a solidarity and information meeting sponsored by the Association for Soldiers in Israel – Canada. Although he’s a reservist and no longer on active duty, military regulations require him to be identified only by an initial.

S. started his military career flying Skyhawks, and for the last 20 years, he piloted F-16s. He flew over Gaza, and he was involved in missions over Lebanon, where military targets and civilian dwellings are often indistinguishable.

As an officer in the IAF’s Valley Squadron, he saw first hand how the air force attempts to minimize civilian deaths.

Concern for preventing civilian casualties “is almost at the same level of the operational demand of hitting people,” he said. “We do more than any air force in the world to hit only those who want to kill us.” Pilots can be grounded for failing to hit a designated target.

As an example, S. recalled a mission that took place four or five years ago. The air force received reliable intelligence that a group of senior Hamas leaders was gathering for a meeting in a Gaza apartment building. It was asked to bomb the meeting, but the location of the meeting – inside a four-storey apartment building – prompted a conference of senior military commanders and Ariel Sharon, at the time acting in his capacity as minister of defence.

In the end, it was decided that the attack plane would employ a relatively small 500-pound bomb “to minimize damage to the surrounding buildings,” S. said.

The bomb exploded in the building’s upper floor and took it out. However, the meeting was being held one floor below and the Hamas officials all escaped. A larger bomb would have taken out the building and perhaps others nearby, S. pointed out.

The mission highlights the difficulties faced by the air force in operating in Gaza. “Hamas does all it can to do all their activities within civilian population,” he said. Although the area is densely populated, there are open places they could move to, he said.

A few weeks ago, the Israeli media reported on an incident that again demonstrated Hamas employing human shields. A senior Hamas official received a pre-recorded phone call saying his home was about to be destroyed. Despite the warning, pilots in observation aircraft noted that civilians suddenly were flocking to the building’s roof.

That information was relayed to senior commanders, who have the final say in whether to launch an attack. A decision was made to “throw a smaller munitions bomb near the people.” With the nearby explosion, the roof was quickly vacated and the mission to destroy the building proceeded, S. said.

He noted that the IAF employs only highly accurate munitions in Gaza – laser-guided or GPS-controlled bombs – to try to control civilian casualties.

Still, the air force faces operational quandaries. What to do when munitions are housed in the basement of a civilian building? One solution: the military has employed leaflet warnings and cellphone messages, telling people in the building to leave before the attack, he said.

S., who is in Toronto for a short visit, said Israelis are fully supportive of current military operation and the pilots who fly operational missions overwhelmingly know they are in the right.

Still, he acknowledges, it pains him to see images of wounded Palestinian children. “It’s hard to see that, and I do empathize with the Palestinian mothers. On the other hand, this is total self defence.

“We want to keep it [civilian casualties] under zero, but we know it’s impossible the way Hamas fights.”

It’s a problem the Israeli Air Force faces every day. Sometimes missions are aborted to prevent Palestinian casualties. And that can put Israeli civilians at risk.

“You miss a lot of opportunities and allow people to continue rocket attacks and sometimes suicide attacks,” he said.

“There are hundreds and thousands of man hours of very talented people and sophisticated machines doing patrols and alerts to get big successes you rarely hear about in the news… It’s hard to believe we are spending so much our talent” on planning pinpoint attacks on terrorists. Instead, that talent and time could have been put to use building the State of Israel, he said.

But, he continued, “it’s something we have to do.”

“I’m very proud of what we’re doing.

“I wish for us that we continue to be passionate about not hitting civilian people. It’s sometimes easy to shut yourself off and concentrate on targets being hit. But the way we do it is important. Thinking about the consequences of hitting civilians, that is the only way to win this war.”