Calculating Civilian Casualties in Gaza
There has been a lot of discussion around the civilian casualty count in the current 2023 war between Israel and Hamas and very rarely does it involve nuance or details. We hear many numbers being thrown around like “20,000 civilian casualties” or “500 dead in hospital airstrike”, but we almost never hear a breakdown of how those numbers are generated. I hope to break down some of these numbers here to form a more nuanced and insightful way of examining the statistics.
The Source of the Information
First, we must remember that the casualty numbers on both sides are being provided by the belligerents in the conflict, and they’ve not been verified on either side. However, we’ll take the numbers at face value for the most part and will analyze accordingly.
Casualty Counts from the IDF
As of today, 23 December 2023, we’re being told by the IDF that they’ve taken out approximately 7,000 Hamas terrorists. While the situation on the ground is dynamic, we have reason to believe that this figure is reasonably close to the actual number. And generally, the IDF will revise their estimates as more information is uncovered.
Casualty Counts from the Gaza Health Ministry
It must be pointed out that the Gaza Health Ministry is part of Hamas, so we must recognize that the casualty numbers here are coming from one of the belligerent parties.
To date, Hamas claims that at least 20,000 civilians have been killed by the IDF since the start of the war. However, it must be noted that when Hamas reports casualty figures, they include both civilian casualties as well as combatants.
How to Analyze the Numbers from Hamas
We’ll start with the 20,000 figure coming from Hamas and will use this as a starting point to determine the true (or at least “truer”) number of civilian casualties.
Assuming that the 20,000 casualties includes combatants, we must first subtract the 7,000 Hamas terrorists that the IDF claims to have killed. That brings us to a figure closer to 13,000.
Next, we must factor in deaths from natural causes. While nobody knows the exact population of Gaza (some report it as high as 3,000,000 and some as low as 1,500,000), the most common statistic cited is a population of 2,300,000, so we’ll use that. In a population of this size, we can expect there to be approximately 500 deaths per week from natural causes. Since the start of the war, that would mean we could expect approximately 3,500 deaths from natural causes, bringing the civilian casualty count down to approximately 9,500.
We must also account for the many members of the civilian population who aid and abet Hamas. This would include UNRWA workers who hide hostages in their homes, surgeons who assist Hamas with access to closed off hospital areas, and civilians who allow weapons to be stored in their homes. It’s still much too early to determine the percentage of the population that is complicit in these activities, so we’ll make a very conservative estimate at 15% of the population. Assuming that 15% of the remaining 9,500 civilian casualties are those who aid and abet Hamas, thus placing these people in the category of enemy combatants, we can then subtract another 1,425 people from the civilian casualty list, bringing us to a civilian casualty count of 8,075.
How to Analyze these Numbers
While all civilian casualties are tragic, we can only hope for any military to do their best to minimize the civilian casualty ratio. World War II was the most lethal war in world history, with some 70 million killed in just six years. The civilian to combatant casualty ratio in WW2 is generally thought to be between 3:2 and 2:1, or around 60–67%. In Vietnam, the ratio was somewhere around 2:1, or 67%, and the Iraq war had a civilian casualty rate of around 77%.
According to our analysis, the current Israel / Hamas war shows 8,075 civilian casualties and about 7,000 combatant casualties on the Hamas side. This shows a civilian combatant ratio of approximately 1.1:1, which is drastically less lethal than any other war in modern history.
While the images coming out of Gaza are horrific, and are mostly designed to elicit an emotional response from the viewer, when analyzing the actual numbers, it’s clear that the IDF is striking their targets with surgical precision, and that they’re doing everything possible to minimize civilian casualties. When factoring in the nature of this type of urban warfare with an insurgent force that practices a kind of guerilla warfare, the numbers are even more striking. The actual numbers show that the IDF is striking with surgical precision and doing everything possible to minimize civilian casualties.
As stated before, any and all civilian casualties are tragic. Thankfully, the IDF is doing their absolute best to avoid them to the best of their ability, and hopefully this conflict will come to a resolution sooner rather than later.
