Counting victims in wartime is more than just a statistical census and a measure of the toll of human tragedy. It is also a political fact, sometimes concealed, sometimes exaggerated, through eagerness or manipulation. In the case of the Gaza Strip, the impossibility of independent verification leads to a paradoxical situation: the only source is the Ministry of Health in the Palestinian territory, de facto under the control of Hamas, ruler of the region. All the major media, non-governmental organizations and the UN have repeated its provisional figures for the number of Palestinians killed, as they did during previous rounds of fighting in Gaza.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah has also claimed ownership and accuracy for these figures. It pays the salaries of the civil servants who compile the data in Gaza, and insists that they are supervised. The local Ministry of Health is a mixture of employees recruited since Hamas came to power in the enclave and former civil servants affiliated to Fatah, the rival party that governs the Palestinian Authority, including the deputy of Mai Al-Kaila, the Minister of Health in Ramallah.
Unexpectedly, however, the White House itself questioned these figures. Speaking on Wednesday, October 25, President Joe Biden stressed that he had "no confidence" in the numbers put forward. "I'm sure innocents have been killed. It's the price of waging a war." The contrast between the distancing of these civilian deaths and the sincere empathy of American officials for the Israeli victims of the Hamas attack is striking.
"We can't take anything coming out of Hamas, including the so-called Ministry of Health, at face value," echoed National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on October 26, while "not disputing" that thousands of Gazans had been killed. This official's response to a question about possible violations of the laws of war by the Israeli army was very revealing about the American stance. "we’re not going to react in real-time to events unfolding on the battlefield and every allegation and every strike. We’re just not going to do that," added Kirby.
Criticism crystallized after the explosion at Al-Ahli hospital on October 17. Within an hour, Gaza's health authority hastily announced at least 500 dead. The death toll was revised to 471 the following day. But Israel accused the Palestinian ministry of inflating these figures. American intelligence services told the press that their estimates were between 100 and 300 victims. Since then, the Gaza Health Ministry's figures have been disputed.
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