An research by The New York Times has revealed that Israel, in the weeks following the October 7 attack by Hamas, seriously undermined its defense system to facilitate the attack on Gaza, and used flawed methods to find targets and assess the risk to civilians.

The Israeli military acknowledged the changes to its rules of engagement, but said they were made in the context of an unprecedented military threat and were always in accordance with the laws of war.

Here are some of the main findings of the investigation.

Raised threshold for injuring civilians per preemptive strike

In previous clashes with Hamas, Israeli officers were usually only allowed to harm fewer than 10 civilians in a given strike. In many cases the limit was five or even zero.

At the start of this war, the Israeli military raised that threshold to 20, before lowering it a month later in certain contexts. Strikes that could injure more than 100 civilians would also be permitted on a case-by-case basis.

Extended list of targets

Israel has significantly increased the number of military targets it has proactively sought to attack. Officers could now pursue not only the smaller set of senior Hamas commanders, weapons caches and rocket launchers that had been at the heart of earlier campaigns, but also thousands of lower-ranking fighters, as well as those indirectly involved in military matters.

Limits on how many civilians can be put at risk each day have been removed

The military leadership briefly ordered that its forces could cumulatively risk killing up to 500 civilians a day in pre-planned strikes. Two days later, even this restriction was lifted, allowing officials to conduct as many strikes as they deemed legal.

Shot too fast to properly probe all targets

The pace of the bombing campaign was one of the most intense in 21st century warfare, which officers said made it much more difficult to properly probe targets. Israel dropped or fired nearly 30,000 munitions into Gaza in the first seven weeks, at least 30 times more than the US-led coalition fired in the first seven weeks of its bombing campaign against ISIS.

He used a simple risk assessment

Israel often used a simplified statistical model to estimate the risk of civilian harm: it regularly estimated the number of civilians in a building believed to harbor a target using a formula based largely on the level of cell phone use in the surrounding neighborhood.

Dropped large, inaccurate bombs

In previous wars, the Air Force would often use “roof knocking”, smaller munitions to give civilians some time to escape an imminent attack. Since the first day of this war, Israel has significantly reduced the use of roof strikes. The military also sometimes used less accurate “dumb bombs” as well as 2,000 pound bombs.

Used AI to suggest targets

Israel was the first to use an artificial intelligence system in a widespread way. It helped officers analyze and sign targets exponentially faster, increasing the number of targets officers could propose each day.

Delayed strikes

Hours often passed between the time an officer checked a target and the air force launched an attack on it. This meant that attacks often relied on outdated intelligence.