Israeli data shows 83 pct of Gaza dead are civilians: Report

JERUSALEM

A secret Israeli military database shows that 83 percent of those killed in the Gaza Strip are civilians, according to a joint investigation by The Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.

The outlets reported on Aug. 21 that, as of May 2025 — 19 months into Israel’s war in Gaza — Israeli intelligence identified 8,900 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fighters as either confirmed or “likely” dead.

In the same period, Gaza’s health authorities recorded more than 53,000 fatalities from Israeli strikes, meaning that militants represented only about 17 percent of the deaths, while civilians made up roughly 83 percent.

Conflict analysts said such a ratio is almost unprecedented in modern warfare, exceeded only by atrocities such as the Rwandan genocide, the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and Russia’s siege of Mariupol in 2022.

Human rights groups and genocide experts argued the figures reinforce allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, citing mass civilian casualties along with deliberate starvation.

The investigation also notes that Israeli officials have routinely inflated estimates of militant deaths — sometimes claiming as many as 20,000 — and publicly asserted a near 1:1 civilian-to-combatant ratio, even though internal data shows they privately reject those claims.