‘We didn’t understand the goals of the war’: Israel’s inflated Hamas death toll shows lack of strategy in Gaza

‘War dashboard’ showing number of militants killed was objective in itself with no plan for how Gaza could be governed afterwards, say sources in elite Unit 8200

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s Israel gears up for a new offensive in Gaza, figures from a classified database suggest the country’s political and military leadership has for two years misled their country and the world about a war that has overwhelmingly killed civilians.

In May this year, Israel’s military intelligence database of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters had 47,653 names. Of them, 8,900 were marked as killed, or probably killed, a joint investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call has found.

That is less than one in five of the total, and far below figures given publicly by politicians and military commanders, who have given tolls more than double that number, varying between 17,000 and 20,000 for the same period.