“Nearly 100,000 Palestinians have died in Israel’s war on Gaza, representing approximately 4% of the territory’s population.” The Israeli newspaper reported it in June without anyone paying attention to him. “Leftist”, “Hamas propagandist”, “traitor to the country”, read the comments on the news on social networks. Their data was based on a study by Professor Michael Spagat, an economist at Royal Holloway College, University of London and a world-renowned expert on mortality in violent conflict.
This Tuesday, a new dossier proves them right: it has also found that since October 7, 2023 “more than 100,000 people have probably died in Gaza due to the Israeli offensive.” They are 32,000 more than those recognized today by the authorities of the strip, who speak of 69,000.
The researchers developed a model to analyze the impact of war on mortality, taking into account the great uncertainty that exists due to the limited data available.
The analysis was based on public data from the Gaza Ministry of Health, the Israeli NGO, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (), the United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME) and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
Based on these figures, the researchers estimated that as of December 31, 2024, between 70,614 and 87,504 people had suffered violent deaths in Gaza and, after an updated analysis, that as of October 6 of this year the number has surely already exceeded 100,000.
“As a result of this unparalleled evolution of mortality, life expectancy in Gaza was reduced by 44% in 2023 and by 47% in 2024,” explained Mexican researcher Ana C. Gómez-Ugarte, one of the authors of the analysis. “Compared to pre-war figures, this corresponds to a loss of 34.4 and 36.4 years respectively,” he added.
And the indirect ones are missing
The scientist highlighted that the analysis focuses only on deaths caused directly by the conflict and not those that originate indirectly, although the figures probably reflect only the lower limit of real mortality, she said.
The Max Planck Institute statement further highlighted that the age and sex distribution of the deaths correspond to the demographic patterns that have been observed in several of the genocides documented by the UN IGME.
He clarified, however, that to determine the existence of a genocide, compliance with other criteria must be established, an issue that is outside the scope of the study, in which the Barcelona Center for Demographic Studies (CED) also participated.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry of the Hamas Government, the number of Gazans killed in Israeli attacks since the Hebrew State began its military offensive in the Palestinian enclave following the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023 has now risen to 69,546.
