Leaked Israeli data shows civilians make up 83 percent of Palestinians killed in Gaza
Over the past 40 years of wars, civilians have accounted for a larger share of the dead only during the Rwandan genocide
TheCradle.co
8/21/20253 min read
Statistics from a classified Israeli military intelligence database show that over 80 percent of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces since the start of the genocide in Gaza have been civilians.
“An extreme rate of slaughter rarely matched in recent decades of warfare,” The Guardian reported on 21 August, following an investigation undertaken in collaboration with +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language Local Call.
The Guardian stated that as of May, Israeli intelligence officials listed 8,900 named fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) as dead or “probably dead” since the start of the war in 2023.
By way of comparison, Gaza Health authorities have reported that 53,000 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli attacks during the same period, including fighters and civilians.
This means that the 8,900 dead resistance fighters make up only 17 percent of those killed, and the remaining 44,100 killed, or 83 percent, have been civilians.
The Israeli military database lists 47,653 Palestinians still considered active members of the military wings of Hamas and PIJ.
While the Israeli press and politicians often claim the Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers are inflated, Israel’s military does not dispute the ministry’s numbers and uses them in its planning.
“That proportion of civilians among those killed would be unusually high, particularly as it has been going on for such a long time,” said Therése Pettersson from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP).
“If you single out a particular city or battle in another conflict, you could find similar rates, but very rarely overall.”
In wars tracked by UCDP since 1989, civilians made up a greater proportion of the dead only in the Rwandan genocide.
Such a high proportion of dead civilians reinforces the widely held view, including among many Israeli genocide scholars, that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians.
“Multiple intelligence sources familiar with the database said the military viewed it as the only authoritative tally of militant casualties,” The Guardian added.
However, both databases may underestimate casualty numbers.
Other credible estimates of the total killed in Gaza surpass 100,000. This is in part because tens of thousands are likely buried under the rubble, and tens of thousands more have likely died from indirect causes stemming from Israel’s destruction of health and water infrastructure, and harsh limits on the amount of food that can enter the strip.
In contrast to the military’s numbers, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that as many as 20,000 Hamas and PIJ fighters have been killed and that the civilian-to-combatant ratio is as low as 1:1.
Itzhak Brik, a retired Israeli general, says that Netanyahu’s claims are false.
“There is absolutely no connection between the numbers that are announced and what is actually happening. It is just one big bluff,” he said.
He says that according to officers serving in Gaza, he remains in contact with, “most” of those killed were civilians.
The scale of the killing was partly owing to the nature of the conflict, said Mary Kaldor, professor emerita at the LSE, director of the Conflict Research Programme.
Israel conducts most of its killings through airstrikes that regularly slaughter dozens, including entire extended families at home while they sleep, to assassinate a low-level Hamas fighter or bureaucrat.
“In Gaza we are talking about a campaign of targeted assassinations, really, rather than battles, and they are carried out with no concern for civilians,” Kaldor said.
The high death toll is also not surprising, considering the genocidal rhetoric regularly expressed by Israeli politicians, generals, journalists, and TV commentators.
Israeli general Aharon Haliva, who led military intelligence when the war began, has said 50,000 Palestinians should die in revenge for the 1,200 Israelis killed in the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, even “if they are children.”
While Israel blames Hamas for all 1,200 deaths during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, most were likely killed by heavy weapons unleashed on the Gaza envelope area by Israeli attack helicopters, drones, and tanks, per the Hannibal Directive.
The Israeli military then used these deaths to justify launching a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
