The Cradle – Israeli army admits civilians make up 80 percent of those killed in Gaza since March

The Israeli military has admitted that more than 80 percent of the people killed in the attacks on Gaza since Israel breached the ceasefire two months ago are uninvolved civilians, Hamakom reported on 13 May.

In response to a request from the Hebrew magazine, the office of the Israeli military’s spokesperson stated that 500 of the 2,780 killed in the Gaza Strip as of Tuesday are “terrorists.” In contrast, the remaining 2,280 people killed by Israeli forces were “not suspected terrorists.”

The data shows that approximately 4.5 civilians were killed for every Palestinian resistance fighter supposedly killed by the Israeli forces. For comparison, the ratio of combatants to civilians killed in the Russia–Ukraine war is one to 2.8, while the ratio during the US war against ISIS in Syria was one to 2.5.

Hamakom wrote that the total number of deaths in Gaza was taken from data compiled by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, whose figures were found credible by the Israeli military itself.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that the ratio is just one civilian killed for each combatant killed.

However, many estimates of the death toll in the strip are much higher than the number documented by the Health Ministry.

According to the Euro-Med Monitor, for every Palestinian resistance fighter killed, 14 civilians have been killed – many of them women and children.

Even in comparison with previous campaigns waged by Israel, including those in the Gaza Strip, it appears that the ratio of civilians to combatants killed has soared in the current war.

For example, in Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in 2014, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that for every Hamas fighter killed, about three non-involved people were killed.

When journalists from Hamakom asked the Israeli military for the total number of fatalities, they were told that the army was not monitoring the matter. Throughout the war, the military has only published the number of “terrorists” killed, even though it admits that it has no way of knowing or estimating their number.

The Israeli military spokesman’s announcements of the number of Palestinian resistance fighters killed are intended to undermine the credibility of the data published by the Gaza Health Ministry, Hamakom added, even though army officials have stated they are the official figures on which the military relies.

“In practice, the army’s publications on the matter of fatalities in the Gaza Strip are often blatant lies for propaganda purposes,” the magazine concluded.

When the Israeli military attacked Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis to assassinate Palestinian journalist Hassan Aslih, it claimed that “steps were taken to reduce the chance of harming civilians, including the use of precision weapons, aerial observations, and additional intelligence information.”

However, an investigation conducted by Hamakom found that 31 people were killed in the attack.

Since the start of the war, Israeli forces have killed at least 52,908 people and wounded 119,721, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Thousands more are missing and presumed to be dead, buried under the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli strikes.

Since 18 March, when Israel breached the ceasefire agreement and resumed its bombing of the enclave, at least 2,780 have been killed and 7,680 injured.