Israel has, for the first time, accepted the overall Palestinian death toll figures reported by Gaza’s health ministry, according to Israeli media reports published on Friday that cited senior military officials. The reported acknowledgement marks a notable shift in Israel’s public position after months of disputing casualty data from Gaza, even as international organizations had treated the figures as broadly credible.
Gaza’s health authorities say that around 71,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, including more than 480 deaths caused by Israeli attacks since the start of a US-brokered ceasefire in October last year. Israeli figures show that more than 470 Israeli soldiers have been killed during the conflict.
The Gaza health ministry’s data does not distinguish between civilians and militants, a point Israel has long emphasized in rejecting the figures. The toll also does not include people believed to be buried under rubble or those who died indirectly due to the effects of the war, such as disease, lack of medical care, or starvation.
Despite these limitations, the death toll has been widely cited by international bodies, including the United Nations, humanitarian agencies, and foreign governments. Israel, however, had consistently argued that the Gaza health ministry could not be trusted because it operates under the Hamas administration. Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States, Germany, and several other countries.
According to Israel’s Ynet news website, the apparent shift emerged during a closed-door briefing with journalists, where a government official said Israeli assessments showed that “around 70,000 Gazans were killed during the war, not including missing persons.” The official added that Israeli authorities were now working to separate combatants from civilians within that figure.
“We are currently doing the work of distinguishing between terrorists and those who were not involved,” the official was quoted as saying, adding that the government had pledged to conduct a detailed analysis of the data.
Other leading Israeli outlets, including the daily newspaper Haaretz, also reported on the briefing and the acknowledgment of the scale of Palestinian casualties. However, the Israeli military stopped short of publicly confirming the reports.
Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, the Israel Defense Forces’ international spokesperson, wrote on X that the figures cited in media reports “do not reflect official IDF data.” He added that any authoritative information on casualty numbers would be released only “through official and orderly channels.”
The war in Gaza was triggered by the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas militants, which killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and saw more than 200 people taken hostage into Gaza. Israel responded with a large-scale military campaign aimed at dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in the enclave.
The conflict has caused widespread destruction across Gaza, displacing much of the population and straining humanitarian conditions. Aid groups have repeatedly warned of shortages of food, clean water, medicine, and shelter, particularly during periods of intense fighting and border closures.
In a separate development on Friday, Israel announced that it would reopen the pedestrian section of the Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, following the recovery earlier this week of the body of the last missing Israeli hostage. The move was described by Israeli officials as an important step toward fulfilling commitments under the US-brokered ceasefire agreement.
Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which oversees civilian affairs and aid coordination with Gaza, said that only “limited movement of people” would be permitted through the Rafah crossing in both directions. According to COGAT, European Union border patrol agents will supervise operations at the crossing, while both Israel and Egypt will screen individuals entering and exiting Gaza.
The Rafah crossing has been closed since May 2024, when Israeli forces seized control of the area. Israel said at the time that the closure was necessary to prevent Hamas from using the crossing to smuggle weapons and other military supplies. The reopening, even on a restricted basis, is likely to ease pressure on Gaza’s population and facilitate medical evacuations and other humanitarian movements, though broader restrictions on goods and aid remain in place.
