The population of Gaza has dropped 6 percent during the 15 months of Israel’s retaliatory assault on the besieged Palestinian territory, according to official Palestinian statistics amid widespread allegations of Israel committing ethnic cleansing or “genocide” in Gaza.
The estimated population of the State of Palestine at the end of 2024 was 5.5 million, with 3.4 million in the West Bank.
The population of Gaza for 2024 has decreased to 2.1 million – a 6 percent reduction from its estimated population in 2023.
On Jan 2, at least 13 Palestinians were killed and dozens injured in Israeli airstrikes targeting multiple areas in the northern and southern regions of Gaza.
The local Wafa News Agency reported that Israeli warplanes struck a makeshift tent sheltering displaced families in the Al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. It said the attack killed 11 people, including women and children, and left 15 others with varying degrees of injuries.
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According to the report, two brothers were killed in an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza, while Israeli artillery shelled the western areas of Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
With the Palestinian deaths surpassing 45,500, it is now the largest “martyrs toll” in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, according to a year-end report released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, or PCBS, on Dec 31.
Ola Awad, president of the PCBS, presented the brief on the status of the Palestinian people at the end of 2024.
The report noted that since October 7, 2023, Israel has raged “a brutal aggression” on Gaza, “targeting all kinds of life there” from humans and buildings to vital infrastructure.
“Cities became rubble, and bombs branded the houses, walls, memory, and pages of history with destruction, as entire neighborhoods became history, entire families were erased from the civil register. There are catastrophic human and material losses, yet this aggressive, brutal Israeli aggression against all of Gaza continues,” the report said.
The report also noted that the West Bank “wasn’t spared from this brutal Israeli aggression, where it suffered from the continuous Israeli arrests, raids, closures, and movement constraints”.
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According to figures released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 45,484 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed. Some 17,581 of those killed were children and 12,048 women, in addition to about 11,000 missing persons.
“About 100,000 Palestinians have left Gaza since the beginning of the aggression, and about 106,962 other citizens were injured by the end of December 2024 as a result of the ongoing brutal Israeli aggression.
“In the West Bank, the Israeli occupation continued its aggression, as 835 citizens were martyred and 6,450 others were injured as a result of the attacks by the Israeli occupation forces and settlers,” the report said.
The Gaza estimate includes more than 1 million children under the age of 18, equivalent to 47 percent of the population.
The report said the percentage of individuals under 30 in Palestine amounted to 65 percent of the total population in Palestine — 63 percent in the West Bank and 68 percent in Gaza. Meanwhile, the percentage of individuals aged 65 years and above stood at 4 percent.
Citing the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the PCBS estimates that 60,000 pregnant women are at risk due to the lack of health care in Gaza. Some 13,649 pregnant women are expected to give birth during the next month — 5,522 women in Gaza and 8,127 women in the West Bank.
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About 155,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women face challenges in accessing pre-and post-natal health care services, the PCBS said.
As of September 2024, about 96 percent of the 2.1 million population in Gaza face high levels of acute food insecurity, with more than 22 percent of the population facing catastrophic levels.
The latter figure includes 11,000 pregnant women, and about 3,500 children are at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of food. Thirty-six children have so far died of famine and malnutrition, the report said.
Meanwhile, Israel's foreign ministry said the PCBS data was "fabricated, inflated, and manipulated in order to vilify Israel", Reuters reported.
In January last year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel must prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians, while more recently, Pope Francis suggested a study on whether Israel's attacks on Gaza constituted “genocide”.
Israel has previously rejected all accusations of genocide in its conduct in Gaza.
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Iyad Eid, an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the International Islamic University Malaysia, told China Daily that the PCBS report serves as a “crucial official statement on the harsh realities confronting Palestinians”, particularly in Gaza.
“The importance stems from the accurate official data it provides, but it fails to account for countless martyrs trapped beneath debris from Israeli attacks,” he said.
“A significant number of Palestinians have died from injuries during the war, absence of health services, or while suffering from hunger, cold, and illness in camps.”
He said the evidence from Gaza indicates that Palestinians prefer to sacrifice their lives for their homeland rather than flee.
According to Eid, this suggests that while Israel may increase the number of Palestinian casualties, it “will inevitably encounter relentless resistance”.
“This is evident from the fact that, after nearly 15 months, Israel has failed to eradicate the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, free its captives, or force Palestinian people to abandon their land,” he added.
