The population of Gaza has fallen six per cent since the war with Israel began nearly 15 months ago as about 100,000 Palestinians left the enclave while more than 55,000 are presumed dead, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
Around 45,500 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, have been killed since the war began but another 11,000 are missing, the bureau said, citing numbers from the Palestinian Health Ministry.Â
As such, the population of Gaza has declined by about 160,000 during the course of the war to 2.1 million. More than one million, or 47 per cent, of those left in the enclave are under the age of 18, the PCBS said.
Israel’s foreign ministry said the PCBS data was “fabricated, inflated, and manipulated in order to vilify Israel.”Â
The PCBS added that Israel has “raged a brutal aggression against Gaza targeting all kinds of life there; humans, buildings and vital infrastructure… entire families were erased from the civil register. There are catastrophic human and material losses.”
Accusations of genocide
Israel has faced accusations of genocide in Gaza because of the scale of death and destruction.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s highest legal body, ruled last January that Israel must prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians, while Pope Francis has suggested the global community should study whether Israel’s Gaza campaign constitutes genocide. Earlier this month, Amnesty International released a report which concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.Â
Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations of genocide, saying it abides by international law and has a right to defend itself after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 killed 1,200 Israelis and precipitated the current war.Â
Amnesty International has accused the state of Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war in a new report, an allegation Israel vehemently denied, saying it has respected international law.
Israel’s repeated targeting of hospitals in Gaza, which it has justified by alleging Hamas fighters are using hospitals as command centres, has also sparked fierce criticism and concerns that Israel is breaking international law. The UN Human Rights Office stated in a report on Tuesday that attacks on hospitals have pushed the healthcare system in Gaza “to the point of almost complete collapse.”
Around 90 per cent of Gaza’s population has been internally displaced over the course of the conflict, many of them multiple times due to shifting evacuation orders.Â
The PCBS said some 22 per cent of Gaza’s population currently faces catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, according to the criteria of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global monitor.
Included in that 22 per cent are some 3,500 children at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of food, the bureau said.
