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Amidst the rubble, at first, it’s hard to see a human figure. Then, through the dust, a man becomes visible. He sits hunched on a chair, his face masked, holding only a stick, which he raises in a final, futile gesture at the drone closing in. Then the video cuts.
These are the last recorded moments of Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar, leader of Hamas in Gaza from 2017 until his death in October 2024. Captured by an Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) drone, this footage marks the end of a manhunt for one of Hamas’ key figures, responsible for orchestrating the brutal attacks of 7 October 2023.
But Sinwar’s death raises two key questions: If he was unarmed, why was he killed? And if Israel can target individuals with such precision, why has it resorted to bombing Gaza so extensively?
Under the Geneva Conventions, particularly Article 51 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I, unarmed combatants or those hors de combat are not legitimate targets. If Sinwar was unarmed, his killing raises questions about Israel’s adherence to international humanitarian law.
Moreover, Sinwar’s precision killing draws attention to Israel’s broader military strategy. If such individuals can be located and neutralised, why has the bombing campaign led to such high civilian casualties?
International law’s principle of proportionality requires that military actions avoid excessive harm to civilians in relation to the military advantage gained. The scale of Gaza’s destruction suggests this balance may not have been maintained.
Sinwar’s killing is not unique. Other high-profile figures on Israel’s manhunt list include Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, and senior Hezbollah commanders like Hashem Safieddine and Ali Hussein Hazima.
Few wars have seen such a relentless focus on eliminating military leadership, with targeted killings becoming the hallmark of this conflict, though civilians often bear the brunt.
This marks a shift in modern warfare. States can now track, monitor, and kill individuals with unprecedented precision—yet often rely on weapons with devastating wide-area effects, such as 2,000lb bombs. Technologies like drones, satellite imaging, and facial recognition enable this new form of manhunt, but they come at a high cost in civilian lives.
Israel has a long history of assassinations, targeting leaders of Palestinian and Hezbollah groups. Previous hits include Imad Mughniyeh (2008), Abdel Aziz Rantisi (2004), and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (2004).
But the tempo has increased in this war. In earlier conflicts, war was a collective experience between groups. Now, individuals are the focus, and their deaths are framed as decisive victories, while “collateral damage” becomes the grim term for the civilians caught in the crossfire.
“Some people, including liberals, might argue that targeting Hamas’s leadership is preferable to engaging in a campaign that has already claimed the lives of 40,000 people in Gaza directly, with perhaps another 60,000 or more affected indirectly through starvation, lack of healthcare, clean water, and basic necessities,” says Bill Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, where he focuses on the arms industry.
“But it’s not as if the Netanyahu government is presenting that choice. They are pursuing both—collective punishment and targeted strikes. And when there’s a house with even one Hamas operative among a hundred or more civilians with no connection to Hamas, the IDF shows no hesitation in demolishing the entire building.”
How Computers are Helping Hunt man
Such a shift has been filled by technological advancements, which has transformed the very mechanics of how these manhunts are carried out.
In the past, a hunter relied on physical presence and tracking skills, but today, drones hover silently above the battlefield, equipped with facial recognition software capable of identifying targets in seconds.
Companies like Clearview AI are providing militaries with tools that can transform a person’s face into a mathematical formula, making it possible to track and kill with frightening precision. And, as these technologies evolve, the potential for the never-ending kill lists grows.
Militaries have, as an IDF air force pilot explained to an Israeli newspaper in 2019, begun to focus on the quantity of targets as a measure of success.
“The view in the Israel Defense Forces is that success is measured by how many targets you create, the number of new targets that are entered into the database,” the officer was quoted as saying.
And artificial intelligence (AI) has put an adrenaline boost into the creation of these kill lists.
In April, a +972 Magazine investigation revealed that Israel has increasingly relied on an AI system, called “Lavender,” to rapidly generate manhunt targets for its airstrikes in Gaza.
This AI tool marked tens of thousands of individuals as potential targets. Then a supplementary AI tracking system, called “Where’s Daddy?”, pinpointed when individuals, flagged by Lavender, returned to their family homes. This tracking system reportedly automatically alerted military personnel when targets were inside their homes, meaning the inevitable strike often happened at night – a time when families are present.
Such AI-driven manhunt target generation, combined with minimal human oversight, has led to a significant escalation in the bombing campaign. One source told the magazine that whenever the pace of assassinations slowed, additional targets were added to systems like “Where’s Daddy?” to help boost the kill-list numbers.
“I added something like 1,200 new targets to the [tracking] system, because the number of attacks [we were conducting] decreased,” he said. “Such decisions were not made at high levels.”
Such an AI-enabled process may well have fuelled the decision to bomb a home in southern Lebanon‘s village of Teffahta earlier this week. At least 19 people, including six women and five children, were killed in that Israeli airstrike, just one of thousands.
As Anna Stavrianakis, Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex told Byline Times, this new technology, despite being part of a wider continuum of Israeli surveillance and control, has recently supercharged “the Israeli military’s ability to target Palestinians, allowing them to both kill and maim a greater number of fighters but also bystanders, and adding to the relentless surveillance and fear of everyday life in Palestine.”
What Does This do to war?
The combination of the manhunt with new, lethal technology raises critical ethical questions. How do we ensure that the right targets are identified? Who calls for restraint when AI systems identify more and more targets in their relentless push for solutions? And what are the consequences when the ability to kill becomes as simple as programmi