The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #141076   Message #3264367
Posted By: Jim Carroll
27-Nov-11 - 03:51 PM
Thread Name: Palestine (continuation)
Subject: RE: Palestine (continuation)
Casualty figures since 2000 - to date.
Palestinians = 6,537
Israelis = 1,092
Jim Carroll

American news reports repeatedly describe Israeli military attacks against the Palestinian population as "retaliation." However, when one looks into the chronology of death in this conflict, the reality turns out to be quite different.
Source: B'Tselem, The Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. (Visit their statistics page, last updated September 30, 2011.)
The numbers cited above include civilians and combatants killed by members of the opposing nationality (and therefore, do not include Palestinians killed by an explosive device that they set or was on their person, Israelis killed in 'friendly fire' incidents, etc.). The numbers also do not include the sizable number of Palestinians who died as a result of inability to reach medical care due to Israeli road closures, curfews, the Israeli closure of border crossing from Gaza, etc.
The figure for Palestinian deaths is extremely conservative, since it is difficult for B'Tselem to report on deaths in the Palestinian territories. The Palestine Red Crescent Society, internationally respected for its statistical rigor, reports significantly higher numbers of Palestinian deaths. We do not doubt the reliability of their data, and only use B'Tselem's more conservative numbers because they collect data on both populations.
In the past we used the statistics provided by Israel's military for the number of Israelis killed, but they have not updated their statistics page since early in 2006. In addition, there is reason to believe that their numbers may have been somewhat inflated.