There is another question on a micro level. How many people who are not about to kill you can you kill in self-defence to save how many people?
While in theory, every human life is as important and valued as another we do often in practice allow some movement morally.
The third question is immediacy. Are you allowed to kill someone in self-defence if you know they will kill you tomorrow? Is it just current action, and how far current stretches.
But while those are simplified questions on the philosophy of ethics in these situations they don’t entirely apply to Israel and Palestine. That is because they ignore the power imbalance.
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Something already got wrong in your logic chain if you came up with something like “well maybe if I need to kill 1001 citizens the terrorist is hiding behind in order to save my 1000 citizens, maybe better not do anything and let him kill my citizens”.
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Immediacy is simple in this case. We all know that if Palestinians do not attack Israel then Israel will not attack Palestinians. And we all know that no matter what, Palestinians are going to continue their unprovoked attacks. This means whoever comes up with “let’s attack first because otherwise we’ll get attacked” must be Palestinian, and a lying one.
Why are your citizens somehow more valuable than any other citizens? I am not even saying do nothing. I am saying killing people indiscriminately is not OK.
Second, if these are unprovoked attacks I have no idea what in your world constitutes provoked. I don’t think attacks being provoked makes them right but they didn’t come out of nothing. Israel is not an innocent party here. Neither is Palestine.
It’s not about being valuable or not. It’s about accepting terrorism as weather and do nothing about providing an umbrella. While your stance suggests Israel to silently let Israeli die, hamas is actively using Palestinians in order to get away with their terrorism. This means hamas actively wants anyone interfering to kill Palestinians instead of hamas. They’re making it unavoidable.
Unprovoked attacks are unprovoked. When you want to say “Palestinians were forced to storm the Israel territory in an attempt to kill as many citizens as possible because something happened in the past”, you suggest a provoked attack. And if you say “but look, it didn’t come out of nothing, there is a reason that is righteous”, I’d ask you to consider how exactly it was even theoretically logical and effective. If you want to punish your attacker, you punish your attacker, not civilians. If you want to go war, you better have a plan on how to win from the very start. And if you know you can’t win, you don’t start because you value the lives of your people.
