“The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of a million men is a statistic.” The author of this quote, Joseph Stalin, knew the subject well, at the head of a USSR accustomed to wars, famines and purges. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains far from these orders of magnitude, its daily life has been overflowing with individual tragedies since October 7, leading to heartbreaking statistics.
After the appalling massacre committed by Hamas in Israel, which killed some 1,200 people in one day and captured more than 250 hostages, the Israeli armed response is causing more deaths every day, provoking a debate that is both morbid and crucial. In a Gaza Strip cut off from the world, only the Ministry of Health, a Hamas government body, can give a local estimate of the number of deaths caused by this war. To date, the Palestinian authorities, the UN and various NGOs estimate this human toll at around 35,000 deaths.
On the Israeli side, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of 30,000 deaths during an interview given on May 12. “Whatever happens, it’s a huge number,” said Peter Lintl, an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “But depending on how you look at it, you can change the narrative of the war. There is a moral but also legal aspect to the cost of this military operation, which can be justified according to its objective – to get rid of Hamas – and the means implemented to achieve it.
The real issue: the percentage of civilians killed
The number of Palestinian deaths itself is little debated, despite attempts at disinformation on the subject. The latest example was on May 10, when a rumor spread like wildfire on social networks and in certain Israeli media: the UN had revised downwards its estimates of the number of Palestinians killed.
In reality, the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs has only specified in its statistics the number of deaths identified by the Gazan authorities, which amounts to 24,686, and continues to estimate that 10,000 people died without their identity could not be confirmed at this time. The United Nations therefore continues to estimate the number of deaths caused by this war at 35,000.
The other controversy – and the real issue behind this battle of numbers – concerns the ratio between the number of Hamas fighters and the number of civilians killed. According to Netanyahu, the Israeli army eliminated 14,000 members of the terrorist organization and killed 16,000 civilians. “This ratio, almost one combatant killed for one civilian, would be really low compared to other urban conflicts, like Raqqa or Mosul, underlines Peter Lintl. If Israel provided proof of the reality of this ratio – and it is not the case today – then clearly the accusations of genocide would not stand. In a trial before the International Criminal Court, this could be a central element because to prove genocide, it is necessary to prove the intention to commit it. With such a ratio of combatants killed, it would be difficult to establish.”
For several days, the Israeli government has been relying on the new UN count, which specifies that among the deaths identified in Gaza, the percentage of women and children amounts to 52%. A percentage much lower than the previous estimate, which reached 70% of women and children killed in Gaza.
According to Leslie Roberts, professor at Columbia University, this new figure of 52%, however, says absolutely nothing about the real percentage of civilian casualties. “Obviously, individuals injured by bullets are taken to the hospital and, if they die, they can be identified and counted easily. And these are the vast majority of adult men,” explains this specialist in counting the dead. in crises, who worked, among others, on the conflicts in Rwanda, Iraq and Sierra Leone. “Most women and children are killed by bombs,” he continues. “And are therefore much more often buried without even going through a hospital or morgue, and therefore not identified. But the figures for the first months were very clear and indicated that more than 13,000 women and children had been killed by the end of December!”
The fog of war and the stories of each side
As foreign journalists and independent bodies remain prohibited from entering the Gaza Strip, each camp is taking advantage of the fog of war to advance its own narrative: Hamas by denouncing a genocide against the Palestinians, the Israeli army by ensuring protection civilians as much as possible in its fight against terrorism. “Israel is trying to save face as it faces accusations of genocide, but also proves that it is not acting disproportionately, that it is not violating the laws of war, that it must not become a pariah state, that it is not the destabilizing force in the Middle East, points out Tahani Mustafa, specialist in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the International Crisis Group in London. During previous attacks, statistics on the number of. deaths given by Israel were, in the end, very close to those provided by the Gazan authorities. Before October 7, even the American administration relied on information from the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Despite the controversies, the UN maintains its confidence in this government body of the Gaza Strip, therefore in direct contact with Hamas. “But the Ministry of Health in Gaza is managed by doctors and technocrats, recalls Tahani Mustafa. They work in close collaboration with the Palestinian Authority [NDLR : en Cisjordanie] to establish death and birth certificates, as well as all identity papers which are issued in Ramallah and not in Gaza. These Gazan officials are also paid by the Palestinian Authority and should therefore not be seen only as members of a Hamas organ.”
Furthermore, the skills of Gaza’s medical authorities and the territory’s extremely reliable hospital network are recognized internationally, despite the high rate of poverty in the Palestinian enclave. In 2014, for example, 99% of births in Gaza took place in the presence of professional medical personnel, compared to 80% on average worldwide.
However, this death toll remains particularly complex in a war environment, where 62% of housing has been destroyed according to a joint report from the World Bank and the European Union. “Many colleagues tell me that the medical network in Gaza is collapsing, and therefore that the data [sur le nombre de morts] must be of lower quality today than during the first three or four months of the war, says Leslie Roberts. At that time, external assessments showed how robust these statistics were.” These less reliable data could just as much lead to an undercounting of the number of deaths as to an inflating of the statistics.
Each side can therefore continue to advance its narrative. Without forgetting, as Peter Lintl reminds us, that “the number of deaths is only part of this war and the humanitarian catastrophe currently playing out, particularly with the increasingly serious risk of famine”. Here too, the fog of war must not make us forget the essentials.
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