83% of the dead in Gaza are civilians: Palestine Ambassador

By Desire Tshuma

The State of Palestine is shocked and appalled by the revelations from internal data of the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman), which unequivocally expose Israel’s narrative on the nature of the dead in Gaza as a gross distortion of reality. The data reveals that a staggering 83% of the dead in Gaza are civilians, shattering Israel’s claims that the majority of those killed are Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters.

“This directly challenges the unsubstantiated assertions made by Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, who have repeatedly cited figures of 20,000 to 30,000 resistance fighters killed. The discrepancy between these public statements and the Israeli military’s own intelligence underscores a deliberate campaign of misinformation. Investigations further reveal that these inflated figures are based on unverified battlefield estimates, and that a culture of deception has taken hold within the army to present ‘achievements’ to the public, with field officers admitting that many individuals posthumously classified as ‘terrorists’ are, in fact, civilians.

“For context, the civilian casualty rate in Gaza far exceeds that of modern wars, including Iraq and Syria, where civilian deaths accounted for between 10% and 28%, Afghanistan at 28%, and Bosnia at 40%. Gaza’s toll now approaches the highest historical civilian death ratios in mass killings, including those of Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Mariupol. These revelations constitute not only a damning indictment of Israel’s actions but also a stark reminder of the humanitarian catastrophe that has been unfolding in the besieged Gaza Strip.”

The targeting of civilians, as evidenced by Aman’s own database, is a war crime of the highest order and must be investigated and prosecuted accordingly.

The State of Palestine therefore demands urgent and decisive action from the international community to hold Israel accountable. The world can no longer stand by as Israel systematically targets a civilian population under the guise of self-defense. This information confirms what we have consistently maintained: the high civilian death toll is not collateral damage but the deliberate outcome of a policy of mass destruction.

Dr. Tamer Almassri, Ambassador of the State of Palestine to the Republic of Zimbabwe emphasizes that Israel’s impunity has emboldened it to flout even the most basic principles enshrined in international law and conventions governing the conduct of aggressor armies.

The world will ultimately pay a heavy price for its failure to curb Israeli aggression as Tel Aviv has been allowed to normalize the killing and starvation of civilians, and the targeting of journalists whose only crime is exposing its atrocities to the world.

Israel is not a normal state as it is a colonial entity built upon racist settlement expansion, brutality, intimidation, and a policy of eliminatory occupation. By exporting supremacist justifications, it perpetuates its ongoing cycle of genocide in Gaza.

The day will soon come when Israel’s political, military, and security leaders will be forced to reckon with the grave cost of their statements, actions and policies advocating ethnic cleansing, forced displacement and genocide.

Meanwhile the state of Palestine also condemns Israeli army’s attack on the Nasser Hospital complex in Khan Younis, and its deliberate assassinnation of five journalists in a single day, alongside dozens of civilians.Such a calculated military strike could only have been carried out with political cover and direct orders from Israel’s Nazi-like military leadership. This reality confronts the world’s organizations and the leaders of free nations with the undeniable truth for the thousandth time that urgent action is required before it is too late, and that the international community must abandon its double standards whenever the issue concerns Israel’s colonial project.