Abstract

The ethical discourse on the Israel–Gaza war following Hamas’s attack in 2023 has largely focused on Israel’s response and the competing narratives of the conflict. Little attention has been paid to whether Palestinian civilians may use deadly defensive force against Israeli combatants who threaten their rights—whether such threats are justified or not. Civilians in Gaza are typically treated as passive victims, suspicious sources of liability, or non-autonomous instruments of a collective cause, yet virtually never as individual agents with defensive rights of their own. This neglect is surprising for both theoretical and practical reasons. Theoretically, debates in the ethics of self-defense and war have addressed not only the paradigm case of defense against unjustified aggression but also the special case of defensive force against justified attackers. In practice, Palestinians under attack and those nearby might possess more extensive moral permissions to resist than is usually assumed. The present article addresses this lacuna in three steps. First, it surveys the ethical debate on the Israel–Gaza war and shows that civilians are primarily treated as moral patients rather than as agents with defensive rights of their own. Second, it argues that Palestinian civilians may defend themselves against unjustified Israeli attacks, even when such resistance cannot avert the threatened harm or risks producing worse consequences overall. Third, it argues that Palestinian civilians may also defend themselves against justified Israeli attacks, since they cannot reasonably be expected to know whether such attacks are justified and therefore cannot be expected to act accordingly.