Since Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7th and left after a massacre, Israel has been attacking the Gaza Strip from the air and on the ground. Thousands of people died. The health authority in the coastal strip releases data on the victims every day. But there is criticism internationally. The Ministry of Health is considered by many to be untrustworthy because of its contacts with Hamas. Israel even accuses it of inflating the numbers.
But what’s the point? How credible are the statistics and how are they collected? An overview:
Media around the world, including Stern, rely on data from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health for the number of victims in the Gaza Strip. Because it is the only data available on the victims in the coastal strip. United Nations aid organizations and the International Red Cross also publish data – but also based on statistics from the Gaza Authority.
The Ministry of Health receives data on deaths from hospitals in the coastal strip. The clinics document the numbers of injured and dead people admitted and then transfer them to a digital computer system that the health authority can access. This includes the name, an identification number, day of admission to the clinic, type of injury and the person’s condition, show screenshots obtained by the Associated Press news agency. In addition, the Ministry of Health collects death figures presented by the Red Cross. Statistics are collected and published hourly.
Names, ages or places of death are not mentioned. However, the Ministry of Health made an exception because of criticism of the data: In October, it published a 212-page document that lists everyone who had been killed up to that point – including names, gender, age and identification number. More than 6,700 people are listed there. Nearly 300 people were missing from the list because their identities could not yet be verified, the health authority said at the time.
There are different assessments of this. Experts say numbers are easier to publish than names. According to an analysis by the weekly newspaper “Zeit”, the document is at least considered plausible. The age of those killed corresponds to the age structure of the population in the Gaza Strip. The majority of those who died were men between the ages of 20 and 40 – a typical age for fighters. Compared to the male deaths, women and children are fewer among the victims.
Because of the intense fighting between Israel and the Gaza Strip, the figures can never be immediately independently checked and verified. In addition, it is not entirely clear whether the deaths are civilian victims or whether the killed Hamas fighters are included. So far, Hamas has not released separate statistics on the number of fighters killed. The authorities also say nothing about how the people died, whether in an Israeli air strike or by misguided Palestinian rockets.
This is one of the reasons why the statistics are viewed with skepticism or criticized internationally.
Doubts were sown, among other things, after the rocket hit the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. Hamas directly reported 500 deaths and blamed the Israeli Air Force. In addition, rumors initially circulated that a rocket had hit the hospital. None of this was confirmed. It is now believed that a misguided Palestinian rocket landed in a parking lot next to the clinic. At the time, European secret services estimated that around a dozen people had been killed. The US government expects 100 to 300 deaths, Hamas says 471.
An Israeli military spokesman accused the authorities in Gaza of inflating the death toll. The Gaza authorities have also lied about the number of victims in the past, the spokesman said, citing the rocket strike at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital eleven days after the massacre carried out by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7th. (Here you can read more about it.)
However, another military spokesman revised these allegations in a press briefing at the beginning of December. The ratio between Hamas fighters killed and civilian victims is 1:2. For the 5,000 dead fighters that Israel estimated at the time, there are twice as many civilians. “I’m not saying it’s not bad that we have a two-to-one ratio,” the military official said, but added that Hamas was using civilians as shields. The Hamas-run health ministry reported almost 15,900 deaths that day. The Israeli military official described the numbers as more or less correct. “Hopefully (the rate) will be much lower in the coming phase of the war.”
Israel publishes its own casualty figures for the Gaza Strip. However, they are based on estimates.
“In war, information is fundamentally the subject of propaganda. It is often used as a weapon,” says Therese Pettersson, research coordinator at the Faculty of Peace and Conflict Studies at Uppsala University, to “Zeit”. Pettersson runs a reputable, independent database on the victims of wars and conflicts and knows from experience “that early figures from ongoing conflicts often need to be corrected later.” However, the Gaza Ministry of Health has proven to be a trustworthy source in the past.
Since Hamas occupied the coastal strip, there have been three major phases of war in which Israel has attacked the Gaza Strip from the air. In all cases, United Nations investigators checked the statistics on the victims through on-site research, documents and interviews with the bereaved – and came to a similar conclusion as the Hamas health authority. The number of victims differs by less than four percent and is therefore almost identical.
Aid organizations repeatedly emphasize that the data from the Gaza Strip may differ slightly from reality. Due to the violent attacks, it is currently impossible to check and verify the data on a daily basis. “It is worth noting that the figures released since October 7 are generally consistent with the level of killings that one would expect given the intensity of the bombardment in such a densely populated area,” says the director for Israel and Palestine at Reuters Human Rights Watch. “These numbers are consistent with what one might expect given what we see on the ground through witness accounts, through satellite imagery and others.”
A study that appeared in the journal “The Lancet” at the beginning of December came to the same conclusion. Accordingly, there is no evidence that Hamas and the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip are inflating or even falsifying the data.
Quellen: “The Times of Israel”, “The Lancet”, Reuters, Associated Press, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Zeit Online, “Al Jazeera”, DPA, AFP
