One of the less agreeable legacies of the Second Lebanon War is what appears to be acceptance by the public - and worse than that, by the leadership - of considering civilian locales legitimate targets in a war. The idea is relatively simple and in the past was even considered part of legitimate warfare. It boils down to implementing two strategies at the disposal of the side doing the fighting. The first, direct strategy sees the other side's fighting forces or, in other words, its ability to fight, as the target for the military effort. The second, indirect strategy views the civilian home front and, by implication, its desire to fight and its support for the fighters at the front, as the target.

From the inception of warfare until the start of the 20th century, military history has witnessed innumerable ways and forms of attacking the civilian home front. The indiscriminate war waged by the French army against the FLN (National Liberation Front) in Algeria was the swan song granting legitimacy to this type of warfare. Ever since then, this conception of civilians as a mass and random target has become unacceptable in the West. While it is accepted that there is a possibility that civilians might be harmed by a war, it has become unacceptable for them to be the object of attack.

The world still tends to consider the use of the indirect strategy - in the form of terror actions against concentrations of civilian populations by non-state entities - as acceptable. Thus, we found that our civilian locales were attacked in the summer of 2006, and thus we have been living with the reality that is Sderot for many years now. This indirect strategy employed by terror organizations facing a state that restricts itself to a direct strategy requires a new form of thinking that is suited to the times and the circumstances. A reality in which a blatant attack on civilian locales is no more than a routine news item must be confronted, both in terms of the strategy of the country being attacked and in international law.