Warning Shots Are a Tactical Risk with Strategic Consequences

Arguably, no modern army is more familiar with the brutal reality of high-intensity, contested, dense urban warfare and fighting ‘small wars’ than the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). In Gaza, the enemy is embedded in hundreds of miles of tunnels, inside a labyrinth of concrete and steel, narrow streets and alleys, with improvised explosives hidden in walls, rooms, and roads. They use civilians as shields and civilian infrastructure as cover. And now, as the operation has evolved, the IDF is increasingly facing situations where its forces are operating near large groups of civilians. These include humanitarian zones specifically designed to facilitate the delivery of aid directly to civilians rather than that aid having to go through Hamas. While some IDF soldiers provide perimeter security in these zones, other soldiers—often only hundreds of meters away—are forced to make decisions under fire, under pressure, and under constant global scrutiny.

Urban Combat and the IDF’s Dual Role in Gaza

The IDF has a long history of operating around civilians in Judea and Samaria, including during the First and Second Intifadas, and in southern Lebanon. In Gaza, the current Israeli approach is to isolate civilians in designated humanitarian zones while destroying Hamas in other areas. This is a strategy that attempts to separate the civilian population from enemy forces. This strategy also includes distributing aid directly to the people in four designated distribution sites. The IDF, however, does not distribute the food. Rather, they provide security, almost like police at a major sporting event, so that aid workers can ration the food.

But soldiers are not police. This has put the IDF in the difficult but necessary transition of being asked to conduct combat operations to locate and destroy Hamas in one zone while securing humanitarian centers in another.

These are not hypothetical dilemmas. They are real complexities militaries try to avoid.

The Limits of Military Roles in Humanitarian Zones

The IDF’s challenge is similar to the U.S. Army’s experience in Iraq throughout much of Operation Iraqi Freedom. A common feature of the U.S. Army’s urban missions would often shift quickly from clearing buildings and destroying enemy formations to handing out food and water, setting up checkpoints, and holding perimeters during aid delivery or medical services. All of this often occurred without the doctrine, tools, or public understanding to support the complexity of the mission.

Lessons from Iraq: No Warning Shots

When I deployed to Iraq in 2003, I arrived trained to close with and destroy the enemy. That was what we—the U.S. Army—were built to do. But within weeks of Saddam’s fall, the mission changed. The Army was now expected to separate civilians from insurgents, manage aid convoys, and control crowds. In that chaos, one rule was drilled into the us: no warning shots. Not into the air. Not into the ground. If you fire, it must be aimed and justified.

That rule was not arbitrary. It came from hard experience. A shot into the air comes down unpredictably. A ricochet can kill an innocent bystander. A warning shot fired in fear can trigger panic or escalation. Lack of control only escalates. Soldiering is about self-control. Soldiers are taught drills for combat situations that require instinctive responses. If an ambush happens, do this. If a sniper shoots at you, do that. Soldiers are also trained to maintain a constant 360-degree security bubble around themselves. If warning shots become acceptable in stressful situations, young soldiers can lose the confidence or discipline of knowing when they are authorized to fire their weapon and when they are not.

Stress, Confusion, and the Costs of Indiscipline

Police in most democratic societies are not allowed to fire warning shots for the same reasons. They are considered too unpredictable, too dangerous, and too easily misunderstood. But the American soldiers in Iraq were not police. Rather, they were soldiers placed in humanitarian and law enforcement-like roles in some of the most dangerous environments on earth. The gap between what American soldiers were trained for and what they were asked to do was wide. And it had consequences.

The IDF’s Current Dilemma in Gaza

In environments where the enemy blends in with the population, the stress of not knowing who is a civilian and who is the enemy becomes overwhelming. Is this person scared, confused, or just trying to get on with their day? Or are they trying to get close enough to kill you? Soldiers desperately want to maintain distance and preserve that security bubble so they can respond to threats before they are in arm’s reach. A lack of control leads to stress, which leads to mistakes.

In Iraq in 2003, multiple attacks increased the stress on the U.S. forces. Just days into the war, a suicide bomber in a taxi drove into a U.S. checkpoint near Najaf, killing four soldiers. A few months later soldiers were attacked in Baghdad at a coalition-run humanitarian office. These increasing attacks had U.S. forces on the edge.

In the major city of Kirkuk, I stood at food distribution sites where crowds surged forward, children screamed, and we tried to hold the line with little more than razor wire and our rifles. We had no shields. No loudspeakers. No non-lethal tools. Just hand signals, language barriers, and the hope that chaos would not turn deadly. Warning shots were not an option. In more than one case, I had to order the site packed up and abandoned due to the chaos.

That is not exactly what the IDF is facing in Gaza, but the parallels are undeniable. From early in the war, one of the greatest and costly threats to IDF soldiers has been Hamas militants dressed in civilian clothing who are able to get close enough to an IDF vehicle to attach a bomb or throw a grenade inside before quickly fleeing. Just last month, a similar incident killed seven Israeli soldiers when a Hamas operative approached an IDF vehicle disguised as a civilian and hurled an explosive at it.

The IDF is not distributing food directly, but it is responsible for securing humanitarian corridors and convoys, particularly the large-scale operations run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has delivered more than 56 million meals in four weeks. IDF Soldiers provide security, while Palestinian workers and American contractors handle the logistics. Yet when civilians surge toward aid convoys or cross into security zones before the site is operational, soldiers often wrestle with a split-second choice between doing nothing or firing a warning shot.

In June of 2025, I conducted multiple phone interviews of Israeli officers I had previously observed in Gaza during my multiple research trips. I asked about the events surrounding the humanitarian zone and the practice of warning shots. One of the Israeli officers I spoke with were clear. There is no policy to harm civilians. “There is no order that we’re aiming to hurt anyone,” one IDF officer told me. “Our interest is that the population comes and takes the food.” But the system is not perfect. Forces rotate in and out of Gaza every two months. Most are reservists. Many are undertrained for humanitarian roles. Another officer admitted candidly, “The forces are not well trained for this.” In some incidents, soldiers have had to respond to rapidly deteriorating crowd conditions. There have been injuries, and in rare cases, deaths.

Meanwhile, Hamas prepared for these moments in advance. In large part this is because they previously injected themselves into the flow of international humanitarian aid to enrich their loyalists and fuel their militant infrastructure. As a result, Hamas initially ordered civilians not to take any food from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation or face “severe consequences.” When that failed, they worked actively to sabotage the centers. Intelligence and drone footage show Hamas operatives firing into crowds to provoke panic, then blaming the IDF. Hamas publishes media statements declaring massacres even on days when distribution proceeds smoothly. Hamas’ goal is clear: collapse the aid system and regain control over food distribution.

The Information War and Strategic Risk of Warning Shots

In today’s environment of instantaneous information sharing across a globally connected world, Israeli soldiers fight an uphill battle to share their side of the story. A warning shot, even one fired to maintain standoff, becomes the next viral clip. An incident in which IDF soldiers attempt to stop civilians from breaching their security bubble instantly turns into headlines accusing them of shooting civilians waiting for food. The assumption of guilt spreads faster than any investigation or fact-check. To be sure, information operations both parallels and intertwines with the combat and security operations in Gaza.

These are not theoretical challenges. They are deadly realities of modern urban war. The lesson is the same as those learned the hard way by U.S. forces in Iraq: space saves lives. Seconds matter. But so do doctrine, training, and equipment.

After a series of tragic incidents in Iraq, the U.S. Army codified new rules: no warning shots. Instead, soldiers were ordered to conduct rules of engagement and escalation-of-force training and issued cards with specific steps. These included lights, signage, loudspeakers, warning markers, and disabling shots at vehicle engines. Some units received pepper spray rounds, rubber bullets, megaphones, and high-powered laser pointers. They were also given improved translation tools. American soldiers were no longer left with only two options: do nothing or shoot to kill. They were given choices and protocols that allowed them to maintain control under pressure.

In Gaza, the IDF is facing its own version of the challenge faced by U.S. forces in Iraq, in an even more complex environment where every mistake, and even lawful actions, are quickly portrayed as war crimes before any facts are confirmed. The IDF operates under an intense global spotlight. A warning shot fired to maintain a safe standoff distance can be instantly reframed as an intentional attack.

In one early incident, international headlines accused Israeli soldiers of shooting and killing civilians waiting for aid, only for evidence to later that there had been no firing at the aid distribution sites at all. In May and June 2025, multiple reports claimed Israeli forces had killed civilians at food sites in Rafah. Those claims, often citing Gaza health officials or UN sources, were later contradicted by IDF drone footage and statements from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. While IDF investigations are still ongoing, the gunfire appears to have occurred outside the humanitarian zone and involved warning shots directed at suspected attackers. In June 2025, Haaretz ran a story alleging soldiers were ordered to shoot unarmed people seeking aid. Israeli commanders denied that claim and opened inquiries, but by then, the headlines had already spread worldwide. In this environment, every warning shot becomes a potential strategic liability even when it is legally justified and tactically necessary.

Adapting Doctrine and Restoring Control

Multiple IDF officer told me they are adapting. One officer told me that an IDF working group is helping develop escalation-of-force tools. Engineering units are improving humanitarian zones with better buffer areas, barriers, and access routes. Centers that experienced more incidents were temporarily shut down for redesign and retraining. But more is needed.

No soldier should lose the right to self-defense. The presence of civilians does not eliminate the threat. When the enemy uses civilian disguise as a weapon, the burden of responsibility shifts to commanders, governments, and the public. Soldiers cannot be left with impossible choices. They need doctrine. They need equipment. And they need public understanding.

Urban warfare is unforgiving. It collapses certainty. It turns split-second actions into headlines. One moment a soldier is raiding a tunnel. The next, he is standing guard over food distribution. That was our reality in Iraq. It is the IDF’s reality in Gaza.

The thin line between control and chaos is often a single shot. A warning shot, whether fired with restraint or panic, can save lives or take them. It can defuse a threat or ignite an information war. It is not a solution. It is a risky tool that can backfire on the battlefield or in the court of global opinion. And no soldier in a dense battlefield should be left without every possible means to manage the complexity of that fight.

The U.S. Army learned that lesson the hard way in Iraq. The IDF is learning it now in Gaza. Warning shots should be prohibited. Soldiers must be trained and equipped to stay in control—even when every instinct tells them to act.