How many civilians has Israel killed in Gaza? A classified report says…

There has long been a debate over the Gaza war toll.

The Palestinian Health Ministry has claimed that at least 62,000 people have been killed by Israel –  many of them civilians – since the war began in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas.

While Israel has long dismissed such claims, saying that it is targeting only Hamas fighters, more and more historians and experts are accusing Israel of genocide.

Now a secret report is finally shedding some light on the subject. The development comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to take total control of Gaza. Netanyahu has also ordered Israeli officials to begin negotiating with Hamas for the release of hostages.

But what happened? What do we know?

Let’s take a closer look

What happened?

Israeli-Palestinian outlet +972 Magazine, Hebrew-language website Local Call, and The Guardian newspaper conducted a joint investigation.

The reporting from these outlets, based on internal documents seized from groups in Gaza, revealed that Israeli military intelligence estimates that it has likely eliminated around 8,900 fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) , till May 2025. Most of these are low-level members with just 100 to 300 senior Hamas operatives of 750 within the database eliminated.

That would mean that just 17 per cent of those killed by Israel were fighter s and that the rest, 83 per cent were civilians. However that figure rises to 86 per cent when the ‘probable deaths’ have been removed from the list. In short, five out of six people Palestinians killed in the Gaza war are civilians – which strikes directly at the heart of Israel’s denial that it is committing a genocide in Gaza.

The database is run by Aman – also known as the Military Intelligence Directorate.

Several intelligence sources in the know insist the army considers the database the final authority on militant casualty numbers. “There’s no other place to check”, one said.

The database lists 47,653 Palestinians considered active in the military wings of Hamas and PIJ. It says 34,973  are Hamas members, while 12,702 are Islamic Jihad operatives. A few are said to be part of both groups.

For context, the Palestinian health authorities have claimed that 53,000 people have died in the Gaza war till May 2025. It recently put the toilet over 62,000.

Experts say the proportion of civilians killed compared to fighters is unusually high for modern wars. “That proportion of civilians among those killed would be unusually high, particularly as it has been going on for such a long time,” said Therése Pettersson from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), which tracks civilian casualties worldwide. “If you single out a particular city or battle in another conflict, you could find similar rates, but very rarely overall.”

Pettersson said that UCDP, in the global wars it had monitored since 1989, found that civilians comprised a greater proportion of the those killed only in the Bosnian town of Srebenica – not the overall war – in Rwanda during the genocide and Russia’s 2022 siege of Mariupol.

However, experts caution that these are just estimates and that the real number of dead may be even higher. Things in Gaza have undoubtedly deteriorated since May when Israel began refusing to allow food to enter and even killed some of those trying to get aid in. Experts have warned that Gaza is at risk of widespread starvation.

‘Figures presented are incorrect’

Israel’s military has claimed that “figures presented in the article are incorrect” and that numbers “do not reflect the data available in the IDF’s systems”.

However, it has not stated which figures it disputes – nor  Has it shed light on any of the IDF systems it uses to tabulate such figures.

While Netanyahu and his cabinet often dismissed the toll presented by Palestinian Health Ministry as ‘Hamas propaganda’, the military is set to consider the numbers credible. Even the ex-chief of military intelligence appeared to cite the toll numbers recently.

Israeli politicians and generals have claimed to have killed as many as 20,000 militants during the war in Gaza. They say these civilian to combatant ratio has been roughly equal or 2:1.

But experts say these totals are likely inflated to include civilians with links to Hamas such as government officials and police. International law does not allow states to target ordinary citizens. While international law does not define what is an acceptable ratio of civilian to militant deaths during such an operation, it examines each attack on the principle of proportionality.

Experts say Israel’s total also comprises Palestinians with zero Hamas connections. Israeli soldiers are often allowed to designate people they have killed in Gaza as militant combatants without any proof of the same.

“We are reporting a lot of Hamas operatives killed, but I think most of the people we report as dead are not really Hamas operatives,” an intelligence source said.  “People are promoted to the rank of terrorist after their death. If I had listened to the brigade, I would have come to the conclusion that we had killed 200 per cent of Hamas operatives in the area.”

 Retired general Itzhak Brik, whom Netanyahu consulted with at the beginning of the war, said, “There is absolutely no connection between the numbers that are announced and what is actually happening. It is just one big bluff,” he said.

“They lie non-stop — both the military echelon and the political echelon,” Brik added. “In every raid, the IDF Spokesperson’s announcements said: ‘Hundreds of terrorists were killed,’” he continued. “It’s true that hundreds were killed, but they weren’t terrorists. There is absolutely no connection between the numbers they announce and what is actually happening.”

Muhammad Shehada, a Palestinian analyst, added, “Israel expands the boundaries so they can define every single person in Gaza as Hamas,” he said. “All of it is killing in the moment for tactical purposes that have nothing to do with extinguishing a threat.”

Mary Kaldor, professor emeritus at the LSE, director of the Conflict Research Programme and author of New Wars, said Israel was operating in densely populated areas.“In Gaza we are talking about a campaign of targeted assassinations, really, rather than battles, and they are carried out with no concern for civilians,” Kaldor said.

She said the number of dead compared to the amount of fighters killed were similar to Sudan, Yemen, Uganda and Syria. “These are wars where the armed groups tend to avoid battle. They don’t want to fight each other, they want to control territory and they do that by killing civilians,.

“Maybe that is the same with Israel, and this is a model of war [in Gaza] that is about dominating a population and controlling land. Maybe the objective always was forced displacement”.

‘Required for future generations’

Israel has insisted that it is only acting to ensure its survival. However, its politicians and officers have spoken a different language since the beginning of the war.

On the day of October 7, 2023, itself then-Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi is said to have told his wife, “Gaza will be destroyed”.

Aharon Haliva, the former head of military intelligence, said, “The fact that there are already 50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations.”

“For each [victim] on 7 October, 50 Palestinians have to die … There’s no choice, they need a ‘Nakba’ every now and then to feel the consequences.”

The Nakba of course, was when Palestinians killed and thrown of the land in order to make way for the creation of the Israeli state.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. The ICC has accused them of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed between October 2023 and May 2024. Netanyahu and Gallant have denounced these warrants as ‘ridiculous’.