Data analyzed by Scher and Van Den Hoek shows that by Dec. 5, the percentage of Gaza's buildings that had been damaged or destroyed already had surpassed the destruction in Cologne and Dresden, and was approaching the level of Hamburg.

Israel has pushed back on the criticism, arguing its forces are conducting themselves no differently than U.S. troops did when they faced difficult urban warfare against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or when they fought the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In a video posted to X, Israeli Air Forces Chief of Staff Brigadier-General Omer Tischler said "dumb bombs ... are standard munitions regularly used by militaries worldwide," and that the claim these are indiscriminate and cause uncontrollable damage is "misleading."

Former IDF chief of staff Avi Kochavi told an Israeli publication in June that the Gospel system is "a machine that produces vast amounts of data more effectively than any human, and translates it into targets for attack."

"This surge points to a potential escalation in military tactics, payload capacity or a shift in targeting policies that appear to have disregarded the safety and lives of the civilian population to a greater extent than in previous operations," the NGO concluded.

Israel argued after the 2014 war that the relatively low proportion of women and children among the dead proved that it was making efforts to avoid harming civilians, and supported its claim that 40 to 50 per cent of those killed by the IDF that year were members of militant groups such as Hamas.

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