80% of Gaza deaths are civilians: Does Israel know that?

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza has said that more than 62,000 people have been killed in Israel’s nearly two-year bombardment of Gaza. However, Al Jazeera reported on Sunday (August 24) that the real number is likely much higher. It said that Israel has always claimed that it is targeting Hamas fighters, not civilians, but a leaked military report revealed otherwise. The report said that 83 percent of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza were civilians. The report was based on an Israeli intelligence database that records the deaths of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fighters. According to the database, as of May, Israel had killed 8,900 fighters during the war in Gaza. This is an estimate, as 1,570 of these are listed as ‘probably dead’. This figure includes 8,900 active combatants out of 47,653 combatants. Of these, 34,973 are listed as Hamas and 12,702 as PIJ fighters. According to an Israeli online magazine, this figure, when compared to the total Israeli death toll in Gaza, which was 53,000 in May, means that 16.8 percent of Israeli deaths or ‘probably’ deaths were combatants. According to the latest figures from the Health Ministry, Israel has killed at least 62,686 people and injured 157,951 in the 22-month offensive. Thousands more Palestinians are missing. Studies have shown that the number of casualties is much higher. A study published in the medical journal The Lancet suggested that the true death toll in the first nine months of the war could be 40 percent higher than reported. It also said that many of the bodies of those killed by Israeli forces were burned during bomb or missile attacks. Bodies decomposed in areas held by the army or were buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings, preventing rescuers from reaching them. Israel has repeatedly claimed that it is doing everything it can to limit civilian casualties and has disputed the figures given by the Health Ministry. In September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel had the lowest civilian-to-combatant death ratio in the history of modern urban warfare, claiming that the army was killing one civilian for every combatant it killed.