Ten thousand. Twenty thousand. Thirty thousand. Now, more than forty thousand dead. Since the start of the Israeli-led war in the Gaza Strip, Gaza authorities have exacted a human toll almost daily from the conflict. Used everywhere, by everyone, This count, carried out by the Hamas Ministry of Health, has been the subject of several controversies since the start of the war. The publication, in September, of a nominative list of victims, a transparency operation, paradoxically revived some criticism, while, at the same time, many experts and media agree in considering the figures reliable, even underestimated.
A unit in charge of verifying data.
The ministry publishes daily the death toll in the Israeli bombings, which it describes as “martyrs”and provides statistics on the people who died, the proportion of injured, the number of hospitals destroyed and those still functioning. The administration provides even more detailed data. A document, published in mid-September, lists in 649 pages the 34,344 deaths identified as of August 31, with their name, sex, date of birth and age. Without making distinctions between combatants and civilians, it establishes that those over 60 years of age, women, as well as those under 18 years of age represent more than 60% of the deceased. this list “marks a significant improvement in the accuracy and quality of the ministry’s reporting on casualty counts”observed British economics professor Mike Spagat, a researcher specializing in armed conflicts.
To arrive at this assessment, the ministry relies on data from public and private hospitals in Gaza. When an injured or dead person is transported to the hospital, caregivers record their personal information in a computerized record. If a body is not identifiable, due to its injuries, or is not reported by those close to it (sometimes entire families die), health professionals register the deceased with an identification number. According to the local Ministry of Health, more than 7,600 people declared dead upon arrival at the emergency room have not yet been identified since the start of the conflict.
All this information is then transmitted to the “central registry of martyrs” of the Ministry of Health and is then verified by a specific information unit. Composed of five employees, according to a ministerial document sent to World, this team “makes great efforts to update, verify and ensure the integrity of this data”. But this count was sometimes prevented, or even interrupted, by the destruction of several hospitals by the Israeli army. According to the World Health Organization, only 17 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partially operational.
To overcome this difficulty, the ministry relied on first aid sources (Red Crescent, Palestinian civil defense) and on “reliable media sources”. He also installed a form to report “martyrs and missing persons.” to count the victims buried under the rubble, or those who could not be transported to hospitals. The information unit is in charge of verifying each testimony, then, based on the evidence collected, a judicial committee rules on the deaths.
But this methodology has been criticized for its opacity and the difficulty in accurately identifying the dead with this type of source. Not to mention the victims who go through this system and who have not been reported. Those who were buried without going through the morgue, or whose loved ones do not know they are dead. The Gaza Health Ministry now distinguishes in its reports between identified victims and those who are not.
Israeli and American authorities are publicly skeptical
Criticism of this count crystallized around the explosion that occurred on October 17 at the Al-Ahli hospital. The ministry announced 500 deaths before revising the figure to 471 victims. Israel accused the ministry of manipulating these figures. US intelligence services estimate between 100 and 300 deaths.
Israeli authorities have asked to be wary of any communications coming from Hamas. Since 2007, the Islamist movement has controlled the Palestinian enclave, but its political rival, the Palestinian Authority, ruled by Fatah, retains its prerogatives over health in the territory. It is she who pays the salaries of the ministry’s officials, some of whom are affiliated with Hamas and others with Fatah. However, the media reported that the Israeli military relied on the ministry’s figures in its reports. But today he publicly states “17,000 terrorists” Are you. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in May. “14,000 combatants dead and probably about 16,000 civilians”without further details.
Another episode continued the confusion. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which has transmitted casualty counts in Gaza since the start of the conflict, changed the presentation of its figures between May 6 and 8. If the death toll remains the same (around 35,000), the data shows 4,959 women compared to 9,500 previously, and 7,797 children compared to 14,500. The press and social networks deduce that the proportion of men (and therefore potentially combatants) has suddenly increased. -assessed upwards. OCHA had to explain that it was now publishing details only of deaths identified by the Ministry of Health, instead of transmitting estimates from the Gaza government’s press office, which mixed identified and unidentified victims, and was more confusing, as explained by the French and international media. However, this matter highlighted obvious inconsistencies between different government sources in Gaza.
Humanitarian organizations rely on Palestinian figures
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, like most humanitarian organizations, considers the government source reliable: “We have worked with the Palestinian Ministry of Health for many years, including during previous conflicts. Our balance sheets are very similar to theirs and in some cases we even had higher figures.”assures World his spokesperson. The evaluations carried out by the UN over the last fifteen years are more or less similar to the ministry’s evaluations.
The official reports are supported by several independent analyses. British public health specialists found that death rates reported by the Ministry of Health in Gaza followed similar trends to deaths among staff at the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees. Furthermore, researchers from the American Johns Hopkins University have estimated that there is no “There is no evidence of excess mortality inflated by the Gaza Ministry of Health”and so? “The difficulties in obtaining accurate mortality figures should not be interpreted as intentionally erroneous data”.
The non-governmental organization (NGO) Airwars published a study in July on 3,000 casualties recorded by the ministry during the first 17 days of the war. After cross-checking these names with other sources of information, researchers found that more than 70% of the identities matched official lists. “We find that the ministry’s figures are generally reliable, comments the director of the NGO, Emily Tripp. Making thousands of names public with biographical details allows us to independently verify this record. The ministry says: “If you don’t believe our figures, here’s a starting point to do your own research.” »
Other organizations also carry out this verification work. The Swedish University of Uppsala, through its database on armed conflicts, has identified more than 30,000 deaths in Gaza between October 2023 and May 2024. Figures close to those of the Ministry of Health.
the world
Support a newsroom of 550 journalists.
Unlimited access to all our content from €7.99/month for 1 year.
Subscribe
But some of these investigations refer to the first weeks of the war, when the communication of hospital data was not yet greatly hindered. “Today there is no way to verify the number of deaths for which the ministry does not have complete information”, says independent Israeli researcher Mark Zlochin in the scientific journal Nature. While he believes the deaths reported in morgues are credible, the researcher believes the total number of deaths is likely overestimated because the figures may include people who died for reasons unrelated to the war.
On the contrary, experts call for these “indirect” deaths to be taken into account. Over the past year, the health situation has deteriorated considerably in Gaza. The violence of the current conflict, the lack of clean water, food and health care, the destruction of hospital infrastructure and population displacements inevitably lead to more deaths. A letter, published in July, in the British medical journal. the lancet estimates that this conflict could lead to the death of 186,000 Palestinians: of the 2.3 million inhabitants counted in 2022, this would represent 7.9% of the total population of Gaza.
