Calculating the real cost in Gaza

Palestinians returning to inspect their destroyed homes in the Tal al-Hawa area, southwest of Gaza City. Many were trying to retrieve whatever furniture they could from the rubble. — Saher Alghorra/The New York Times

FOR many Americans, there may be a temptation to disbelieve the enormity of what has happened in the Gaza Strip.

After all, it is a catastrophe funded by their money, enabled by their weapons, condoned by their government and carried out by one of their closest allies.

It’s little wonder some want to downplay the damage. Their defence is to cast doubt on the numbers.

The argument goes like this: the death toll, counted by the Hamas-run Health Ministry, must be exaggerated to stir outrage. If not, then most of those killed must have been Hamas fighters, not civilians.

Either way, it can’t be worse than other horrors – South Sudan, Congo – in which Americans bear no blame.

Taken together, it’s a potent mix of deflection and denial.

Yet now comes the reckoning. After two years of relentless violence, a fragile ceasefire has settled over Gaza, bringing joyous scenes of Israeli captives reuniting with families and Palestinian prisoners returning home.

But against that stands an apocalyptic landscape of devastation and loss.

Now, if we want it, there is a chance to discover the true cost of this war. We may find it’s even worse than we thought.

Let’s start with the numbers.

At least 68,229 people have been killed in Gaza, by the latest count from the Ministry of Health – which, like other government services in the enclave, is run by Hamas. That fact has stirred deep scepticism.

But experts who study war deaths say the ministry’s accounting has been unusually rigorous. It includes not just names but also ages, sex and, crucially, identification numbers.

“The Ministry of Health, we know, for various reasons, is really conservative actually in putting people on the list,” said Michael Spagat, a professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, who has studied the toll of war for decades.

There is, he said, “a remarkable level of transparency. The information is incomparably better than what we know about recent conflicts in Tigray, Sudan and South Sudan.”

In fact, many experts believe the tally is still an undercount.

Spagat and a group of researchers conducted a 2,000-household survey suggesting the official figures understate deaths by roughly 39%.

The fatality numbers don’t distinguish between fighters and civilians – another opening for denial. Yet Spagat’s survey confirmed that the majority of those killed – about 56% – were women, children and the elderly.

“In a typical conflict, you’d see more military-age males,” he said. “The percentage of women, children and elderly is unusually high.”

One need only look at Gaza’s ruins to know that Israel’s bombs fell on young and old, men and women alike.

But counting the dead reveals only part of the cost.

In many conflicts – Darfur, Tigray, Yemen – as many or more die from hunger and disease as from direct violence.

These are “indirect deaths”, measured by comparing death rates before and after fighting begins. Leaving them out obscures the true toll.

High rates of indirect deaths are typical in vast, impoverished regions where aid struggles to reach those in need.

Gaza is different. It is small – roughly the size of Detroit – and easily accessible by land.

Before the war, it had one of the world’s highest per-capita rates of humanitarian aid, and its people were relatively healthy.

High vaccination rates shielded children from disease. That should have meant fewer indirect deaths than in other wars. And for much of the conflict, it did.

Then came Israel’s decision to sharply restrict, and at times block, humanitarian aid. Gaza slid into famine. Its health system collapsed. Most of its two million inhabitants fled repeatedly, living in squalor and exposure.

We cannot yet know the full cost of that destruction. The ceasefire may help – but in some ways, this fragile peace could be deadly.

Many returning home will find nothing but rubble. And Israel, according to aid groups, is already using the flow of food, water, medicine and fuel as leverage in negotiations over Gaza’s future.

Under the truce’s terms, 600 trucks of aid were to enter daily. In reality, the United Nations says fewer than 100 have arrived on average since the guns fell silent.

Palestinians in Gaza are destitute.

“I’d be very surprised if there’s anything less than 50,000 non-trauma deaths,” said Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and a leading expert on famine.

If he is even close, this conflict will have killed roughly 7.5% of Gaza’s prewar population in just two years – deadlier, in proportional terms, than the wars in Yemen, Syria, Sudan or Ukraine.

And it will be impossible to hide from that reality. Gaza’s small size, accessibility and aid networks mean the numbers can be verified with unusual precision.

That will make denial harder – but not impossible.

In a 60 Minutes interview, Jared Kushner described the ruins of Gaza after a visit with the Israeli military.

“It looked almost like a nuclear bomb had been set off in that area,” he said. Asked if he thought it was genocide, he replied immediately: “No.”

His business partner, Steve Witkoff, jumped in: “No, no, there was a war being fought.”

The rubble tells one story; the people who created it tell another. The reckoning will be in deciding which story one ­chooses to believe. — ©2025 The New York Times Company

This article originally appeared in The New York Times