The Israel Defense Forces now accept the Gaza Health Ministry’s estimation that over 70,000 Palestinians were killed during the war in Gaza, after years of denying the validity of the calculation.
Senior IDF sources told Haaretz, the Times of Israel, and other Israeli news outlets that the Gaza Health Ministry’s calculations, an organization overseen by Hamas, were correct. The health ministry doesn’t distinguish between militant and civilian deaths — that ratio is something the IDF is still trying to figure out. Shortly before the October ceasefire, the IDF claimed that it killed at least 22,000 Hamas and allied combatants.
The Gaza Health Ministry holds that Israel has killed 71,667 Palestinians in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023. If the estimated number of slain militants is correct, it would mean that over three civilians died for every single militant killed in the war.
The admission from the IDF is particularly notable, as it vehemently insisted throughout the war that Hamas purposefully inflated the death count as a propaganda tactic intended to stir up outrage against Israel.
Previous reporting suggests that the IDF already knew the figures were reliable. In January 2024, the Israeli outlet Last Call reported that the IDF fully believed the health ministry’s death tally and even almost exclusively relied on it for casualty estimates.
The true death toll is likely higher — Gaza’s Health Ministry believes thousands more dead are trapped under the extensive rubble throughout the battered strip.
The health ministry also estimated that the IDF injured 171,343 Palestinians. Put together, this means that over 1-in-10 Gazans were casualties of the bloodiest round of fighting between Israel and Palestinians since 1948.
The IDF’s public estimations of the combatant-civilian death ratio could also be far off, however. A joint investigation in August from the left-wing Israeli +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian revealed that the most respected Israeli intelligence believes it had only killed 8,900 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants, out of a named list of 34,973 Hamas fighters and 12,702 PIJ fighters. The figures were taken from a classified May 2025 assessment, which estimated 44,100 civilians had been killed. This suggested that nearly 83% of those killed in the war in Gaza were civilians, but an Israeli military spokesperson disputed the data, as have both public Israeli and American estimates.
ISRAELI MILITARY ANNOUNCES FINAL HOSTAGE REMAINS RECOVERED FROM GAZA
Israel’s admission that it believes the Gaza Health Ministry’s death count is likely to revive scrutiny, after attention has shifted elsewhere with the presumed conclusion of the war in October. The ceasefire has been briefly broken several times, with several hundred Palestinians killed in limited airstrikes.
The remains of the last Israeli hostage were handed over to Israel over the past week. Negotiators are now working on Phase 2 of President Donald Trump’s peace plan, which includes the disarmament of Hamas.
