http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324851704578133221887645666.html

November 24, 2012

Accurate Death Toll a Casualty in Gaza

By CARL BIALIK

Fresh hostilities between Israel and Hamas over the past two weeks threaten to renew a dispute over the numbers that help shape coverage of the recurrent conflict.

Both Israelis and Palestinians died in the violence before Wednesday's cease-fire. On the Palestinian side, however, both the number of people killed by Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip, and the proportion of those killed who were civilians, are shrouded in ambiguity. The chief source of numbers is medical officials in Gaza, who some analysts say have an interest in inflating the totals. Investigators for nongovernmental organizations produce their own counts, while acknowledging the difficulty of separating civilians from combatants when those who take up arms against Israel aren't wearing uniforms or fighting nonstop. Most counts put the number of Palestinian deaths above 150.

There is no ambiguity when Israel kills a man in Gaza while he is launching rockets into Israel, said Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B'Tselem, an Israeli research group investigating and counting deaths. In that case, the man is considered a combatant. "But what happens when that guy goes home, plays with kids, and is having coffee in the evening?" Ms. Michaeli said. B'Tselem would see him as a combatant.

The dispute over Israeli civilian deaths from Hamas rockets isn't about the numbers, but about their interpretation. More than 1,000 rockets have been fired at Israel, but a combination of their own imprecise targeting systems, Israel's missile-defense program and coordinated evacuations of civilians have kept casualties to a minimum. Six Israelis--two soldiers and four civilians--were killed in rocket attacks.

"There should not be any expectation that the number of casualties should be equal or proportional or balanced out," said Jeffrey White, a defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank. "One group aims at civilians, who are reasonably well protected, while the other group aims at military targets, but civilians are not well protected."

Lydia de Leeuw, a staff member of the international unit of the Gaza City-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, said there is no practical way for Gaza, which has 1.7 million people, to protect civilians when its main population centers are extremely densely inhabited. "If an airstrike happens here for whatever reason, it is going to affect civilians," Ms. de Leeuw said.

Both B'Tselem and PCHR--with funding from the European Commission, several European governments' aid arms, and private donors--have assigned field workers to investigate deaths in the Gaza Strip. PCHR has five field workers in Gaza, B'Tselem two. Each group says it trains workers in interviewing and documentation. B'Tselem cross-references its data with information from the media, Palestinian armed groups and the Israeli army. As for PCHR, "We look at all the circumstances," Ms. de Leeuw said. "There's full research."

As of Friday afternoon, medical officials in Gaza put the death toll at 168. PCHR had counted 160 dead, including 105 civilians. B'Tselem counted 102 Palestinians dead through Monday night, including at least 40 civilians. Because of the time it takes to confirm deaths amid hostilities, and to distinguish civilians from combatants, "Our numbers are often behind," Ms. Michaeli said.

There may never be universally accepted counts of the number who died, and how many were civilians. Death tolls from Israel's major air and ground operation in Gaza nearly four years ago remain disputed. A United Nations report in 2009 summarized the findings, which included a death toll ranging from 1,166 counted by the Israeli government to 1,444 counted by Gaza authorities, with figures from nongovernmental organizations in between, though closer to the Gaza count. There was wider disagreement over the number of casualties who were civilians: PCHR estimated 1,167 were noncombatants, while the Israeli army estimated no more than 400 were.

Israel's armed forces haven't released their own Palestinian casualty numbers in the latest violence.

All counters face accusations of bias. Israeli and Palestinian officials have an incentive to understate or overstate damage in Gaza, respectively, analysts say. "The Palestinians, especially Hamas, during lulls are accurate, as they are at the beginning of Israeli attacks, but increasing pressure leads them to distort the figures, especially civilian numbers," said Hillel Frisch, a professor at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel.

Medhat Abbas, director-general of Al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip, insisted casualty numbers from Gaza officials were accurate. "If somebody claims that Palestinians' claims about numbers are not true, we have all the evidence. We have not lied before," he said.

Some groups supporting Israel's government have said PCHR and B'Tselem are predisposed against the government, which they dispute. "I'm confident our figures are accurate," Ms. Michaeli said.