Sources in Israeli intelligence agencies say that Israel approved killing 20 civilians to get one low-ranking HAMAS fighter, who may have been identified only by heuristics.

Two sources said that during the early weeks of the war they were permitted to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes on low-ranking militants. Attacks on such targets were typically carried out using unguided munitions known as "dumb bombs", the sources said, destroying entire homes and killing all their occupants. "You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it's very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs],"

If someone's death was not important enough to use a smart bomb, but worth killing 20 civilians, those civilians' lives must have been valued at very little.