In recent weeks, two talking points have spread rapidly across media and social platforms. The first is the claim that the IDF now accepts Hamas’ assertion that 70,000 people were killed in Gaza. This was widely framed as a decisive moment, a supposed confession by Israel that Hamas’ figures were correct all along. That narrative is false. The IDF did not affirm Hamas’ fatality count and explicitly rejected the idea that a vague remark by an unnamed official constituted confirmation of anything. More importantly, even if one were to accept a headline figure of 70,000, a number not inconsistent with Israel’s stated civilian-to-combatant ratio, it would still resolve none of the questions that actually matter, including who was counted as a civilian versus a combatant, how natural deaths were treated, and how Gazans killed by Hamas itself were accounted for..
The second talking point claims that a newly announced Hamas compensation scheme amounts to an admission that it lost 50,000 combatants. This too is false. The claim rests on a misreading of a statement saying compensation would focus on “50,000 families in the Gaza Strip classified as among the most affected,” not on fighters, deaths, or combatant losses.
As fatality figures proliferate and are increasingly misrepresented, this article explains what the numbers show, how they are constructed, and what you need to know to interpret them properly.
1. Hamas’ Fatality Numbers: A Carefully Curated Version of Reality
Any analysis that treats Hamas’ fatality figures as neutral data is fundamentally flawed. Hamas is a terrorist organization with a sophisticated propaganda apparatus, devoting enormous resources to media strategy, psychological warfare, and narrative control. It is implausible to assume such an organization would refrain from shaping casualty figures, likely the most politically powerful metric of the war.
Hamas has a long record of managing casualty data to serve its narrative, particularly by concealing combatant losses while presenting deaths as overwhelmingly civilian. During the 2009 conflict, Hamas initially claimed only 48 fighters were killed, then admitted months later the true number was between 600-700, matching the IDF’s estimate. The same pattern repeated in later conflicts: the overall fatality total fell within a plausible range, but the internal breakdown aligned far more closely with Israel’s assessments. This manipulation began early in the current war as well, most notably with Hamas’ claim that more than 500 people were killed at Al-Ahli Hospital in October 2023 (it turned out to be a PIJ rocket and actual fatalities were far fewer), followed by assertions that 70% of casualties were women and children, later revised to roughly 50% (still inflated).
What has changed today is scale, not method, with far higher stakes for Hamas and unprecedented global attention. The fatality list is curated to appear plausible while obscuring critical distinctions: civilian versus combatant, war deaths versus natural deaths, Israeli-caused deaths versus those caused by Hamas itself, omitted combatants, and the use of child soldiers. The headline number is therefore not transparent accounting but narrative construction, projecting a reasonable aggregate picture while concealing its structure.
With this in mind, Hamas’ latest reported total of 71,800 deaths reflects a rough aggregate of deaths experienced in Gaza since 10/7 across all causes. In that limited sense, the figure plausibly approximates total mortality, even as its composition is systematically distorted for political effect.
2. The Best Estimate for Combatant Losses is 25,000
The most credible estimate for Hamas, PIJ, and other militant combatants killed is 25,000. This figure includes fighters killed on 10/7 inside Israel, during major combat phases in Gaza, and in subsequent months. It aligns with cumulative IDF statements issued throughout the war, daily battlefield reports from the heavy ground combat period in late 2023 and much of 2024, and the observable degradation of Hamas’ fighting capability and extensive wartime recruitment.
President Trump explicitly affirmed this figure in writing in October 2025. He also referenced 58,000 Hamas members killed at a press conference, but this was a misstatement, as the number exceeds Hamas’ total manpower.
Based on information revealed over time, the total militant force available during the war was roughly 65,000, consisting of 35,000 Hamas fighters, 12,700 PIJ members, several thousand from smaller factions, and approximately 15,000 recruits added during the war. A figure of 25,000 killed represents about 38% of this total militant cohort.
This number is not 8,900, which reflects only a narrow subset of Hamas and PIJ militants the IDF apparently identified by full name and matched to the pre-war list, not total combatants killed. That absurd standard of counting combatants killed fueled the false claim that 83% of Gaza fatalities were civilians. It is also not 50,000, a figure derived from misinterpretations of Hamas statements about compensating Gazans who suffered losses.
Greater clarity will come when the IDF releases more comprehensive data. Hamas is unlikely to admit its losses anytime soon, though history suggests that, once the propaganda value fades, its eventual admissions will converge with IDF estimates.
3. Natural Deaths Are Embedded in the 70,000 Total
A critical distortion in Hamas’ fatality reporting is the inclusion of natural deaths within what is presented as a list of war casualties. The headline figure is routinely treated as if every name represents a death caused by Israeli military action. That assumption is false. Pre-war data show that Gaza averaged roughly 6,000 natural deaths per year from illness, accidents, and infant mortality, implying more than 12,000 such deaths since 10/7. Yet for the first eighteen months of the war, Hamas insisted that every individual on its fatality lists had died as a result of Israeli action.
That position changed in April 2025. After removing several thousand names, Zaher al-Wahidi of Hamas’s Ministry of Health (MoH) admitted to Sky News that “a lot of people… died a natural death.” Hamas has never published a separate list of those deaths. If such a list existed, Hamas would have every incentive to release it, since doing so would raise the headline death toll while preserving the claim that the remaining names were war casualties. Its continued absence, even months into the ceasefire, indicates that natural deaths were never separated out in the first place.
This conclusion is now confirmed by independent sources. A December 2025 report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) published mortality data drawn directly from the MoH, showing more than 3,300 confirmed natural deaths in Gaza during the first ten months of 2025 alone (see p. 39). The release was perhaps inadvertent, but the implication is clear.
Other evidence points in the same direction. A July 2025 mortality survey by Médecins Sans Frontières found that 25% of deaths from the sample were from natural causes. While not representative of all Gaza, it confirms that natural deaths are embedded in the overall total. Numerous individual cases have also been documented in which people counted as war fatalities died from illness or accidents.
Based on Gaza’s pre-war mortality rates and the duration of the conflict, an estimate of over 10,000 natural deaths embedded in Hamas’ fatality total is reasonable, allowing for reporting gaps. Any honest accounting of war casualties must remove these deaths before attribution even begins.
4. Hamas Has Killed Thousands of Gazans Themselves
Not every violent death in Gaza was caused by Israel. Thousands of rockets fired by Hamas and PIJ malfunctioned and fell inside Gaza, a failure rate PIJ has itself acknowledged, killing many Gazans. Hamas has also executed alleged collaborators, aid workers and looters, and engaged in deadly clashes with rival clans and gangs. Based on consistent, documented incidents across more than two years of war, thousands of Gazans have been killed by Hamas or other internal actors, yet these deaths are routinely attributed to Israel, further distorting the true causes and composition of Gaza’s wartime deaths.
5. Claims of 100,000 or More Deaths are False
Claims that Gaza’s true death toll exceeds 100,000 rest on dubious statistical methods and no longer align with Hamas’ own fatality lists. Assertions of large numbers of non-violent but war-related deaths are unsupported by evidence, particularly four months into a ceasefire when such deaths would be observable and reportable. Notably, every report or study advancing claims of massive excess or unreported deaths ignores the existence of a death-reporting system that allows fatalities to be registered without a body and ties reporting directly to compensation.
For more than two years, Gazans have been able to report deaths without a body using an online form or a phone call, and indeed, 18,000 such deaths have been submitted in this manner. Families are strongly incentivized to do so because compensation is directly tied to registration. Under these conditions, large-scale underreporting is implausible.
The MoH encourages families to report deaths and missing persons, with the reporting form explicitly allowing a “body under rubble” designation. This system is reinforced by compensation data: Hamas has disclosed payments to roughly 19,300 widows and pledged future compensation to 50,000 families. There is no credible scenario in which tens of thousands of additional deaths remain unreported while such mechanisms are in place. Not a single excess-mortality study grapples with this reality, which has only become clearer deep into the ceasefire as Hamas has admitted to mass compensation payments.
Inflated numbers continue to circulate in activist and propaganda spaces, but their evidentiary foundation has largely collapsed as the ceasefire enters its fifth month. A recent Al Jazeera story claiming that 3,000 Gazans were “vaporized” is illustrative. Even if such deaths had occurred as claimed (they did not), Gaza’s reporting system allows deaths to be registered without a body, leaving no plausible mechanism for tens of thousands of fatalities to vanish from the record.
6. Thousands of Child Combatants are Part of the 70,000 Total
There is no doubt that Hamas and other militant groups use child combatants, in some cases children as young as 12. Demographic analysis of the fatality lists already pointed to this reality, with roughly 2,000 excess deaths among male teens. That inference is now confirmed by direct evidence.
Numerous martyr posters, funeral notices, and social media posts identify underage fighters killed in combat. Most recently, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) publicly acknowledged that 9% of its announced fighters killed were minors, based on its own fighter death lists cross-referenced with Hamas’ fatality list. This shows that combat participation by minors was neither rare nor incidental.
Yet media outlets and NGOs that cite headline death totals remain silent on the use of child combatants. Acknowledging their presence would complicate the simplistic civilian-versus-combatant narrative. Once child combatants are counted as combatants rather than automatically classified as civilians, another pillar of the prevailing fatality narrative collapses.
7. Gaza Fatalities Are Heavily Skewed Towards Adult Males
Hamas’ own data show 34,069 male fatalities aged 18–59 versus 10,976 women of the same age, an excess of more than 23,000 adult males of combat age. When teenagers are included, based on earlier fatality lists that broke deaths down by individual age, the pattern is unchanged: 73% of deaths among teens and adults combined are male, a ratio of roughly three to one.
This demographic pattern is decisive. A three-to-one dominance of males among combat-age fatalities is exactly what one would expect from a campaign focused on dismantling an armed group. It also corroborates estimates of 25,000 combatants killed, including child combatants, particularly given evidence that Hamas’ lists omits fighter deaths.
Hamas’ latest figures also show that about 52% of all reported fatalities are now adult males. The long-repeated claim that “most” of those killed in Gaza are women and children is false. These figures still remain distorted by the inclusion of natural deaths, deaths caused by Hamas itself, and child combatants. Even so, the demographic signal is clear: Gaza’s reported fatalities are heavily concentrated among males of fighting age.
8. Civilian-to-Combatant Ratio is Approximately 1.5 to 1
The civilian-to-combatant ratio is the metric most closely tied to claims of indiscriminate warfare, war crimes, and even genocide, and is therefore aggressively contested. Israel’s critics seek to maximize it by falsely inflating total deaths toward 100,000 while simultaneously minimizing combatant losses to as few as 8,900. The evidence supports neither move but the desire to inflate the ratio explains why this type of propaganda persists.
Once the Hamas fatality total is properly decomposed, the ratio tightens dramatically to about 1.5 to 1. Natural deaths embedded in Hamas’ lists must be removed. Deaths caused by Hamas itself, through executions, misfired rockets, gang violence, and internal clashes, must be separated. Child combatants cannot be automatically classified as civilians. And combatant deaths that never appeared on Hamas’ lists must be added back. With these corrections, the structure of the fatalities becomes clear.
The civilian-to-combatant ratio aligns with what the demographic data in Hamas' own numbers already indicate: a campaign focused on dismantling an armed group embedded within a civilian population.
Conclusion
The evidence shows that Gaza’s fatality figures have been widely misread and repeatedly used as narrative proof rather than analytical data. The headline total reflects real deaths, but its composition has been systematically distorted through the inclusion of natural deaths, Hamas-caused deaths, and child combatants, alongside the omission of significant fighter losses. Claims of large numbers of excess deaths or missing “under the rubble” fatalities ignore the reporting mechanisms and compensation incentives that make large-scale undercounting implausible. When these factors are properly accounted for, the civilian-to-combatant ratio tightens substantially and the demographic pattern points to a campaign aimed at dismantling Hamas and other militant groups, not indiscriminate harm. Once this ratio is recognized, the use of the headline fatality number as evidence of indiscriminate warfare collapses, revealing how the figures have been framed to advance a narrative rather than to describe the war as it was actually fought.
