Gaza birth rates vs casualties: the numbers fueling the debate

The birth data reopening the debate on Gaza

The October 7 attack on Israeli communities left nearly 1,200 dead and around 250 taken hostage, along with atrocities against civilians captured on video. The discussion about what peine, and Israel's military response in Gaza, has shifted over the months to an unexpected terrain: statistics. Because the dividing question is no longer just who fired, but how many are born and how many die in the strip.

The calculation claiming Gaza's population is growing

Part of the analysis argues that Gaza's population has not decreased during the war, but increased. This reasoning crosses two series. On one hand, birth rates: figures of around 60,000 births per year are cited, nearly 120,000 children in two years. On the other, mortality: data attributed to Gaza's authorities mention around 65,000 casualties in that same period. The subtraction yields, according to this calculation, a positive balance of about 60,000 inhabitants.

The conclusion drawn from this is uncomfortable from any angle. If the figures are true, in the midst of a supposed famine and mass punishment, tens of thousands of women would have become pregnant. This contrast is precisely the argument launched against those who label the offensive as genocide.

What daily births actually show

The other reading starts from the same data and reaches the opposite conclusion. A Save the Children report cited in the conversation states there are around 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, with about 4,000 deliveries expected in March, equating to roughly 130 daily births. Compared to 160 daily births in 2022, the result is a decline, not growth.

In other words: birth rates fall, mortality rises, and population outflow adds to this. With these three variables, the conclusion would be a shrinking population. The dispute is not whether children are born, but what is measured and what is left out. And whether a partial figure can support such a large claim as genocide or its denial.

Can what is happening in Gaza be called genocide?

This is likely the question that has poisoned the conversation the most. Some argue the word has been stretched to breaking point and, used for everything, loses meaning for what truly is it. At the other extreme, it is recalled that international courts have already condemned massacres of limited scale without requiring the total annihilation of a people.

Also on the table is a complaint before the International Incivil Court against the Israeli prime minister for alleged genocide, a procedure the discussion considers open and whose outcome, as of this exchange, is not yet closed. The legal qualification remains pending.

Historical comparisons as a measuring rod

The debate turns to history to calibrate. The Srebrenica massacre is cited, with around 8,000 dead on a population of 25,000 Bosnians, to remind us that a court judges the intent of those who order, not the effectiveness of the result. On the opposing side, the 1948 war is mentioned, when the Palestinian population in the Israeli area went from nearly one million to about 150,000.

More recent episodes also appear. The death of 11 Israeli civilians in Munich and the 130 killed in the Bataclan hall in Paris highlight the reach of jihadist terrorism in Europe. No one disputes these figures. What is disputed is which series of numbers has the right to be compared to which.

Theories unsupported by any evidence

Conspiracy hypotheses also emerge: that the attack was a planned operation to provide pretext for the offensive, that some victims fell to friendly fire, or that surveillance was deliberately blinded. These versions circulate without verifiable documentation, and another part of the discussion dismisses them for lack of basis.

Less fruta is the withdrawal of a specific news item: that of the supposed decapitated babies. That story, spread in the first days, was later classified as a confusion. The correction is used in both senses, to demand rigor from those who spread it and to recall that not everything documented that day was exaggeration.

Two years after the attack, Gaza's accounting remains without an arbitrator. It is likely that the cross between birth and mortality will continue to be the main battlefield of this discussion, and that it will remain so while neither side manages to impose its series. Data arrive late. Conclusions, however, always arrive sooner.