Israeli Military Acknowledges 70,000 War Deaths in Gaza: Data Disputes and Strategic Shift -

On January 29, 2025, the Israeli Defense Forces, through background briefings to media outlets such as Haaretz and The Times of Israel, acknowledged for the first time that approximately 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in the military operations in the Gaza Strip. This figure largely aligns with the statistics continuously released by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry since the outbreak of the war on October 7, 2023. Over the past 27 months of conflict, the Israeli government has consistently dismissed the casualty data provided by Hamas as misleading and unreliable, while the United Nations, international human rights organizations, and most independent research institutions consider these figures methodologically credible. This shift in the military's stance occurs against the backdrop of the International Court of Justice hearing genocide allegations brought by South Africa and other countries, and with a ceasefire agreement having been in place for several months, far from being a simple data confirmation.

Data Dispute: The Long Journey from Complete Denial to Partial Admission

According to the latest statistics from the Gaza Ministry of Health, as of early 2025, a total of 71,667 Palestinians have died as a result of Israeli military operations. The ministry stated that over 90% of the deceased have records of their names, ID numbers, and ages. This figure does not include the thousands of missing individuals believed to still be buried under the rubble, nor does it include those who have died due to the collapse of the healthcare system, starvation, and disease. In August 2025, the United Nations reported that 500,000 people in Gaza were in a state of catastrophic malnutrition.

Israel's shift in position has gone through several stages. At the beginning of the war, Israel completely refused to accept Hamas's data. In 2024, Israel's foreign ministry repeatedly attacked international media that cited this data. At that time, the military provided only one specific figure: claiming to have killed 22,000 Hamas terrorists between 2023 and 2025. In September 2025, outgoing Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi revealed in a public speech that over 10% of Gaza's population had been killed or injured. Based on Gaza's population of 2.3 million, this means the total casualties amounted to approximately 230,000. This latest acknowledgment of around 70,000 deaths, while still differing from Hamas's total, represents the closest the military has come to aligning with the other side's statistics.

Independent research data paints a more complex picture. In July 2025, a study from the University of London estimated that when Hamas's official death toll was 45,000, the actual number of fatalities might be 65% higher, reaching 75,000, with 56% being women, children, or the elderly. The study also noted that approximately 8,000 non-violent deaths exceeded expectations, pointing to shortages in medical care and issues of starvation. Conversely, a study by Australian researchers in April 2025 suggested that Hamas's data might be exaggerated, claiming that many minors listed as child fatalities were actually Hamas members. In a briefing on January 29, the Israeli military maintained that the Gaza Health Ministry's data does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, and denied that at least 400 Palestinians had died from starvation.

Military Operation Assessment: Strategic and Legal Dilemmas of Civilian Casualty Ratios

The Israeli military, while acknowledging the total death toll, is intensifying a critical analysis: distinguishing the proportion of combatants to civilians among the deceased. The outcome of this analysis will directly influence the international community's judgment on whether Israel is complying with international humanitarian law. According to the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, parties to a conflict are obligated to distinguish between military objectives and civilians and to ensure that attack operations adhere to the principle of proportionality.

Currently, the sporadic data available are contradictory. In August 2024, a disclosed internal database from Israeli military intelligence indicated that approximately 83% of the deaths in Gaza were civilians. Analysis by the U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) pointed out that from March 2025, when the Netanyahu government ended the previous two-month ceasefire, until the new ceasefire agreement took effect in October, 15 out of every 16 deaths in Gaza were civilians, with the civilian proportion as high as 94%. Therese Pettersson, a senior analyst at the Uppsala Conflict Data Program at Uppsala University in Sweden, believes that all signs suggest the proportion of civilian casualties in Gaza may be around 80% or even higher.

The Israeli military has refuted this claim. They disclosed to journalists that the estimated civilian-to-combatant death ratio is between 2:1 and 3:1, meaning for every combatant killed, two to three civilians are killed. Based on this ratio and a total death toll of 70,000, the number of combatant deaths would be between 17,500 and 23,300, which is far lower than the 22,000 terrorists the military previously claimed to have eliminated. This also suggests that civilian deaths range between 46,700 and 52,500. The military further argued that many deaths cannot be directly attributed to Israeli airstrikes, including misfired Hamas rockets (the military stated that approximately 13% of Hamas rockets failed before early 2024) and Hamas executions of those they view as political opponents or attempts to prevent civilians from evacuating conflict zones.

Humanitarian Crisis and Legal Accusations: The Political Game Behind the Data

The acknowledgment of the death toll occurred under intense international legal and political pressure. South Africa's genocide lawsuit against Israel at the International Court of Justice is ongoing, with Brazil joining the case in July 2025. The International Court of Justice has requested Israel to submit detailed information by March 12, 2026, outlining the measures taken to protect civilians and prevent genocide. The total number of deaths and the proportional breakdown will serve as core evidence in this case.

The humanitarian situation is another focal point. The Israeli military firmly denies the existence of deaths among healthy individuals caused by starvation, stating that related reports are based on false statistics or involve individuals who already suffered from severe illnesses before the war. They cited an example where humanitarian officials claimed two specific children had starved to death, but the military quickly verified that both individuals were still alive. However, the military also acknowledges that a food insecurity crisis did occur in Gaza from July to August 2025, and they averted a famine crisis by rapidly increasing the number of aid trucks. According to Israeli data, a total of 112,000 aid trucks entered Gaza throughout the war, including 1.7 million tons of food, as well as 1.8 million tents and tarpaulins. Currently, 16 field hospitals are in operation.

The Gaza Health Ministry stated that at least 492 Palestinians have died since the ceasefire began in October 2025. According to data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), by the end of 2025, 421 Palestinians (including 113 children) had died from hunger. These indirect deaths are not included in the main combat death statistics but are crucial for assessing the overall humanitarian impact of the conflict and compliance with international law.

The Situation After the Ceasefire and Its Future Impact

The ceasefire agreement reached in October 2025 temporarily halted large-scale military operations. According to the agreement, Hamas released the last 20 living detainees and handed over 28 bodies, while Israel released more than 1,800 Palestinian detainees and transferred 360 Palestinian bodies. The Israel Defense Forces' Hostage and Missing Persons Command is also set to be disbanded this week after the body of the last detainee, Ran Gevili, was recovered.

The Israeli military's decision to disclose casualty figures after the ceasefire and before the International Court of Justice hearing is a calculated strategy. This move represents a partial compromise with undeniable objective facts while also aiming to gain the initiative in subsequent legal and political battles—by controlling the narrative framework that distinguishes combatants from civilians, it attempts to shift the discussion from whether large-scale casualties have been caused to how many of those casualties constitute legitimate targets. However, even according to Israel's most optimistic estimate of a 2:1 civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio, the approximately 3.5% mortality rate among Gaza's 2.3 million population, along with assessments by experts such as Oxford scholar Neta Crawford, who estimate that over 10% of Gaza's population has been directly killed or injured, indicates that the destructive intensity of this conflict is exceptionally rare in modern urban warfare.

The future of the Gaza Strip remains shrouded in uncertainty. Thousands of bodies may still lie beneath the rubble of buildings, and the complete collapse of medical, water supply, and housing systems is causing ongoing non-violent deaths. The Israeli military's acknowledgment of 70,000 deaths is not a full stop, but rather the beginning of a deeper debate on the historical responsibility, legal characterization of this war, and its long-term impact on the security landscape of the Middle East. Data itself does not speak, but the acknowledgment, denial, and interpretation surrounding it have already become a secondary battlefield for the conflicting parties in the international court of public opinion and legal arenas.