On Jan. 28 the Israeli Defence Forces publicly confirmed that roughly 70,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza since the fresh outbreak of fighting in October 2023, a figure that closely matches the tally long reported by Gaza’s health authorities. Israeli outlets said the military is now trying to disaggregate those deaths into combatant and civilian categories, a task that officials acknowledge remains incomplete and politically fraught.
The Gaza health ministry’s figure — released on Nov. 29, 2025 — put the death toll at more than 70,000 with more than 170,000 injured. For much of the last two years Israel declined to formally accept those numbers, calling them unreliable; the new confirmation represents a tacit alignment between the two sides’ tallies even as disputes persist over methodology and classification.
Israeli military spokespeople have previously said that for every militant killed, two to three civilians also died, a ratio that underscores the heavy civilian cost of operations in densely populated urban areas. The confirmation intensifies scrutiny of battlefield conduct, targeting practices and rules of engagement that have shaped much of the international debate about proportionality, distinction and civilian protection in the Gaza campaign.
Beyond the raw numbers, the announcement deepens an already acute humanitarian crisis. Tens of thousands of homes and vital public infrastructures have been destroyed, mass displacement continues inside and beyond Gaza’s borders, and health, water and sanitation systems remain crippled. Humanitarian agencies have repeatedly warned that delayed and restricted access for supplies and personnel is multiplying civilian suffering.
The diplomatic and legal consequences are likely to be immediate. A widely cited, corroborated death toll strengthens calls for independent investigations by international bodies, including possible referral to the International Criminal Court or expanded inquiries by UN mechanisms. Several governments that have been cautious in their criticism of Israeli operations may face increased domestic and international pressure to take clearer positions.
Domestically in Israel, the confirmation will feed an already polarised debate over military strategy, political leadership and long-term policy toward Gaza and Hamas. For Palestinians, the confirmation both validates the scale of loss they have long reported and complicates prospects for reconstruction, return and reconciliation — creating deeper obstacles to a political settlement and raising the likelihood of protracted instability.
Independent verification of casualties in wartime is difficult, and differences remain over how combatants are identified, how missing persons are counted and how deaths in secondary causes such as lack of medical care are attributed to the conflict. Still, the convergence of Israeli and Palestinian tallies — even if partial — marks a consequential shift: the human cost of this war is no longer chiefly a matter of competing narratives but of documented scale, with implications for diplomacy, legal accountability and the shape of any post‑conflict recovery.