I think describing what is done in the West Bank as ethnic cleansing is reasonable. Its not a legal category so there is no one definition but its generally defined as the use of force and intimidation to remove expel one ethnic group for the purpose of establishing a demographic majority for another and I think that describes the expulsion campaign in the West Bank. What makes it less obvious is that Israel does it slowly and often through negligence and bureaucratic processes rather than overt military action the way you see in Myanmar against the Rohingya.
I think Bibi has intent to do some form of ethnic cleansing (vague term), if he gets his way and has a one state solution. What I mean is demographic control, violent and/or non-violent. He wants a Jewish majority and sovereignty from river to the sea. Given the birth rates, and eventual Palestinian majority, that's going to involve ethnic cleansing of some kind and/or some form of disenfranchisement/oppression. So, I think it's fair to call Likud's approach ethnic cleansing given his public speeches and his 'river to the sea' position of 30 years.
However, given that the world is pushing for a two-state solution, it will be characterised by diplomats, the public, media, and politicians as something else. Under a two-state solution it is merely illegal territorial acquisition and security to hold that territory.
I've posted
an article here a few times from the left wing Israeli magazine +972 who did an investigation and claimed to have anonymous sources from within the IDF.
They did not claim that there was indiscriminate bombing but rather that they use a very loose criteria to establish targets and seem pressured to generate lots of them. Its like setting an unofficial quota for arrests in a PD. The officers won't arrest people at random, they will look for those whom they have a plausible pretense to arrest. But in many cases that will mean making arrests that aren't about public safety but rather about satisfying certain optics which does lead to injustice and sometimes the pretense is flimsy.
Here's an excerpt
The sourcing is that they have received calls from anonymous members of the intelligence community. No names, attributable quotes, audio recordings, video evidence. No evidence on the record. +972 takes conversations that they weren't a part of to allege facts. It's the definition of hearsay and would not be inadmissible in court. So, I don't put a tremendous amount of weight behind it and just take it as fact.
But, this story more or less tracks with my thinking - that these are targeted strikes, and there is a death calculus being done and that we don't know what goes into each strike analysis or the intelligence relied upon. The article suggests the rubric is vague and shifting, but there is no real document or instruction to point to for confirming this.
And we are not going to get their specific analysis for each bombing - that's active military strategy and intelligence. The US government as a term of the aid, should have its intelligence officers get that info, assess it, make a recommendation to Biden on whether it is appropriate.
It is then upon Americans to make it clear to Biden what is and isn't acceptable as far as moral principles and for him to communicate effectively with the public on how Israel does or does not meet those expectations in a general sense. This is more an American public v government issue rearing its head again - it's dysfunctional.
Would we be okay with Ukraine blowing up apartment buildings in Russia where off duty soldiers live? Idk that there's an obvious answer but I think its morally dubious. Here's another excerpt
That to me comes off as collective punishment. The AI thing is pretty creepy too. If there's sufficient human oversight I can see the value but with the number of targets Israel has went after during the war I am skeptical that there's a lot of vetting.
Yes, if you can't get them in the open field. There is no such thing as off-duty terrorist/soldier in active war. Don't go home if you know it will be bombed. Most militaries are separated into barracks for sleeping and don't go back home at night intermingling their families into the active war zone. The Hamas member is endangering his family and others, stay in the tunnels, 350 miles of tunnels.
Bombing the house/compound with the family in it is how America gets most of its high value targets like Osama bin Laden and Al-Baghdadi. Read about most of the top tier leaders of the past 30 years, they get assassinated at home and they get killed with their families.