First of all, Israel's goal is not to decrease casualties: https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/an-eye-for-a-tooth/ https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/an-eye-for-

First of all, Israel's goal is not to decrease casualties: https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/an-eye-for-a-tooth/ https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/an-eye-for-a-tooth/ Second of all, even if I accept your premise, that "One side tries to increase casualty numbers on both sides of the conflict. The other side tries to decrease casualty numbers on both sides of the conflict.", then clearly it's not working, right? Regardless of motivations, the outcome is Palestinian lives are being lost at a disproportionally higher rate than Israeli. That must be understood. The standard Israeli response to this is "Hamas uses human shields." OK....so you know this, and are still shooting missiles. That means you are knowingly killing human shields. OK, so maybe these human shields are protecting military equipment. Military equipment that is primitive and is completely neutralized by the Iron Dome. The point I'm making is that even if you accept ALL of Israel's narratives about Hamas, about IDF's strategy (which have all sorts of other problems, such as when they get caught sniping civilians and medical personnel), you still wind up in a situation where you have a massive power differential and one side knowingly killing civilians.