Classified Israeli military intelligence figures indicate that five out of six Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been civilians, according to a joint investigation by the Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call. As of May, 19 months into the war, the Israeli military listed 8,900 named fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as dead or “probably dead”. At that time, Gaza’s health authorities put the overall death toll at 53,000, meaning the named fighters accounted for just 17% of the total and civilians for 83%.
The apparent ratio of civilian to combatant deaths is extremely high for modern warfare, even compared with conflicts notorious for indiscriminate killing. Therése Pettersson from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, which tracks civilian casualties worldwide, said: “That proportion of civilians among those killed would be unusually high, particularly as it has been going on for such a long time. If you single out a particular city or battle in another conflict, you could find similar rates, but very rarely overall.” She noted that since 1989, only Srebrenica, the Rwandan genocide and the Russian siege of Mariupol had seen a higher proportion of civilians among the dead.
Israel’s military did not dispute the existence of the database or the data on Hamas and PIJ deaths when approached by Local Call and +972 Magazine. When the Guardian asked for comment, a spokesperson said they had decided to “rephrase” their response, and later issued a brief statement saying the “figures presented in the article are incorrect” without specifying which figures, and adding that the numbers “do not reflect the data available in the IDF’s systems” without detailing which systems. The military did not respond when asked why it had given different responses to questions about the same data.
The database names 47,653 Palestinians considered active in the military wings of Hamas and PIJ, and is based on apparent internal documents seized in Gaza. Multiple intelligence sources familiar with the database said the military viewed it as the only authoritative tally of militant casualties. The Israeli military also considers the Gaza health ministry toll reliable, according to Local Call, even though Israeli politicians regularly dismiss it as propaganda. Both databases may underestimate casualty numbers: the Gaza health ministry lists only recovered bodies, while the Israeli military may not be aware of all militant deaths or new recruits.
Israeli politicians and generals have previously put the number of militants killed as high as 20,000, or claimed a civilian-to-combatant ratio as low as 1:1. The higher totals cited by Israeli officials may include civilians with Hamas links, such as government administrators and police, even though international law prohibits targeting people not engaged in combat. They probably also include Palestinians with no Hamas connections, as Israel’s southern command allowed soldiers to report people killed in Gaza as militant casualties without identification or verification.
