The investigation casts doubt on the transparency of the Palestinian enclave authorities and denounces a manipulation of the reported data to influence international opinion.
A recent report from think tanks Henry Jackson Society, prepared by British analyst Andrew Fox, puts The veracity of the figures of victims presented by the Ministry of Health is questioned. Gaza, an entity controlled by Hamas, during the war between Israel and Palestinian militias since the massacre of October 7, 2023. The study reveals major inconsistencies in the methodology used to record deaths that occurred during the fighting and notes that the numbers would be inflated by including erroneous data and deaths unrelated to the conflict.
Since the start of the Israeli offensive in October 2023, the Gaza Ministry of Health has been the main source cited by international media, claiming that the total death toll exceeds 44.000. However, the report - titled "Questionable count" - indicates that the recording methodology is opaque and has systemic flaws that alter the actual composition of the casualties. Fox details that The reports do not distinguish between combatants and civilians, and the numbers show basic errors in age and gender categories.
One of the most obvious problems highlighted in the report is the incorrect classification of deaths. Cases were found where adult men were recorded as women and adults in their twenties or thirties reported as minor children.. The document mentions, for example, male names such as “Mohammed” listed under the category of female victims, which has the effect of artificially increasing the number of dead women and children, a category that exerts a strong emotional impact on global public opinion.
Added to these errors is another finding: the inclusion of natural deaths as part of the total number of victims attributed to the Israeli military offensive. According to data from previous years provided by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the Gaza Strip records around 5.000 natural deaths annually, as a result of disease and other causes unrelated to war. The report notes that there is no evidence that the Gaza Ministry of Health has separated these figures, and provides concrete examples, such as patients with terminal cancer appearing on lists of those killed by Israeli attacks, weeks after having been registered on waiting lists for medical treatment.
Regarding the ministry's failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians, a key point in understanding the nature of the deaths, he notes that according to the most recent estimates by the Israeli army and US intelligence, between 17.000 and 20.000 Hamas fighters and allied groups have been killed during the conflict. However, this figure is rarely reflected in reports from Gaza, where the dead continue to be presented as civilians without further details.
According to Andrew Fox, The collapse of the information system in Gaza hospitals in November 2023 contributed to aggravating these errors. The lack of a centralized infrastructure led the ministry to rely on partial reporting and open online public forms for relatives to report deaths, further increasing the possibility of duplication and misidentification. “The information collected lacks the necessary verifications and is presented as definitive data, when it clearly is not,” Fox said.
The report also points out the attitude of many international media outlets that have reproduced the figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health without questioning their origin or reliability. According to an analysis carried out between February and May 2024 on more than 1.300 articles, 84% of the media consulted cited only the Gaza Ministry as a source, ignoring other available estimates and omitting clarifications regarding Hamas' control over the reported data.
This pattern of inconsistencies and lack of transparency in methodology is not new. In previous conflicts, such as in 2014 during Operation Protective Edge, Hamas admitted months later that about half of the victims were combatants, even though they had initially been reported as civilians. The current study reiterates that these tactics seek to influence international perception of the conflict and generate pressure against Israel, manipulating an issue as sensitive as the death toll.
While the report does not deny the humanitarian impact of the conflict, it stresses that without rigorous and impartial verification, the reported numbers will continue to distort global understanding of the war and its real consequences.
