Including both combatants and civilians, as reported by Israeli sources. This market will resolve after the war is over and official estimates are available. Close date may be extended.
Note: This market it only for Palestinian deaths, i.e. people from Gaza and potentially the West Bank (but only if the deaths are related to the war). This will not include any deaths from other parties that might join the war, nor of Israeli-Arabs, regardless of how they identify. This is done to clear up the market definitions and make it resolvable, not because of taking any stance as to people's identities.
UPDATE from Oct 13th:
The following criteria will be used to determine if the war is over. Either of the following should be true:
There's a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas that lasts for at least 30 days.
There's a 30-day period in which less than 100 people die on the Palestinian side due to the war, even in the absence of a formal ceasefire agreement.
Update from Oct 15th:
To avoid bias when resolving this market, I've sold all my positions and will no longer place additional bets.
Update from July 8th 2024:
Since the war has now lasted much longer than expected, resolving this market will likely prove to be very difficult. I will ask for help from both Israeli and Palestinian Manifold/Metaculus users in helping me figure out a fair estimate from Israeli sources, once the war is complete.
See also
Update 2025-21-01 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): - Use of Multiple Trustworthy Israeli Sources: The resolution will consider data from all reliable Israeli sources, not limited to a single source.
Community Submissions: Users are encouraged to provide additional sources along with explanations of their trustworthiness.
Update 2025-21-01 (PST): - Sources should be in Hebrew or Arabic and published by an Israeli newspaper, TV channel, NGO, or other trustworthy organization based in Israel. (AI summary of creator comment)
1,000
3.00@traders if you speak Hebrew or have an interest in browsing through Israeli media consider posting a comment with your write up of what the correct resolution number should be. All the sources you bring up should be in Hebrew or Arabic and published by an Israeli newspaper, TV channel, NGO or other trustworthy organization based in Israel.
@nsokolsky The only source I could find is the UN it has the information in English, Hebrew and Arabic. It was not published by an Israeli newspaper… but all other resources including newspapers report “speculation” and it is not much of a research. The main problem is that it is almost impossible to cross information, seems like everything is converging into one source.
@nsokolsky In what cases will you consider non-Israeli numbers for this market? Say for example a conclusive report is filed by the UN.
And how will you resolve considering that, while the attacks in Gaza have stopped, the attacks continue on the West Bank. How will this affect the 30 ceasefire criteria you've set, and will those killings count towards the total? If so, under which circumstances will you stop counting them?
@nsokolsky Ispeak Hebrew
i don't have time right to comb through documents but you're welcome to dm me documents to translate if you find anything of interest
@nathanwei You are correct, but the fact that the longest running newspaper in Israel is reporting the Lancet's numbers seems relevant.
@ICRainbow @nsokolsky Haaretz covering the Lancet article, saying “researchers say” does not count as “as reported by Israeli sources”, right? You are talking about the Israeli governments estimate.
@nathanwei Most news is not primary reporting. I assume if any standard is applied to more liberal outlets reporting from each other across national lines, it will also be applied to more conservative outlets. Either way, a substantial amount of reporting will be necessary to finalize how many Palestinian people were killed by the market's standards according to Israeli sources during the war from Oct 7th 2023 to whenever there is a lasting ceasefire.
@Panfilo Of course. My point was that when the question author wrote “reported by Israeli sources”, he meant something like “reported by the IDF”.
@ICRainbow Sure, but the point is not whether the resources they use align with their narrative or not, the point is that an Israeli source (a criteria for this market's resolution) wrote about the Lancet article.
@nathanwei Since the resolution criteria mentions "Israeli sources" and @nsokolsky mentioned Israel’s media outlets in the comments, I don't think the IDF estimate will be considered as the only source for resolution. I suspect different outlets will be reporting different numbers and this market will take a while to resolve until the dust settles.
@nathanwei
yes this counts - and if Haaretz ONLY reports that number moving forward I’ll assume that’s the number they personally trust the most.
Note that I will use as many trustworthy Israeli sources as I can find, not just the “most trustworthy” one. Please send as many sources as you can find my way - and feel free to do a write up of why you think they’re trustworthy or not trustworthy.
Ceasefire has to last for 30 days before this market is resolved: https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/israel-hamas-gaza-ceasefire-hostages-01-15-24/index.html
@nathanwei any chance you could do a write up of what Israel’s 5 biggest media outlets are saying about the deaths count?
@nsokolsky I imagine they'll be pending for some time as missing persons are searched for and deaths are reassessed where the counts had stopped due to alack of functioning medical tabs.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/01/10/world/gaza-death-toll-study/
Up to June 30 last year, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza reported a death toll of 37,877 in the war.
However, the new peer-reviewed study used data from the ministry, an online survey and social media obituaries to estimate that there were between 55,298 and 78,525 deaths from traumatic injuries in Gaza by that time.
The study's best death toll estimate was 64,260, which would mean the health ministry had under-reported the number of deaths to that point by 41%.
<>
The toll was only for deaths from traumatic injuries, so did not include deaths from a lack of health care or food, or the thousands of missing believed to be buried under rubble.
Israeli Wiki cites the INSS, which seems to be a fairly reputable source. I’ll most likely use them for resolution unless other reputable Israeli sources are named. GPT-4o has this to say about them:
The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) is an Israeli think tank focused on national security and strategic studies. It is affiliated with Tel Aviv University and provides research and analysis on security, military, and geopolitical issues, with a particular emphasis on Israel’s security challenges. INSS is generally considered a reputable and authoritative source in the field of defense and security, often cited by policymakers and international researchers. However, its analyses may reflect a strategic perspective aligned with Israeli national interests, which could influence how some audiences perceive its fairness.
Current numbers as per the INSS (translated from the Hebrew wiki, see screenshot above):
Casualties among Palestinians:
• Deaths: Over 42,603
• Injuries: Over 99,795
• Missing: Over 10,000
• According to the IDF: Over 17,000 militants killed in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war, and more than 4,000 arrested.
Tech for Palestine have added a disclaimer on their data page saying "these numbers do not fully reflect the human toll" and in the link argue that the excess deaths should be considered the "real" death toll.
I think this is shockingly disingenuous and that it's obvious that they wouldn't be saying this if the death toll was as high everyone was predicting it would be.
Nevertheless, I expect more and more activists and organizations to adopt this talking point so it's important for this market and others like it to remain about the "attributable" deaths from the conflict.
EDIT: changed "directly attributable" to just "attributable" in the last sentence. This is to avoid confusion regarding direct/indirect deaths.
Both direct and indirect deaths can be attributed to the conflict and should be part of the death toll.
@Shai Excess deaths get used as the “real” Covid-19 death toll all the time. Why is it obvious to you that it shouldn’t count here?
@Panfilo That's just not how war casualties are measured. For example the Israeli death toll on October 7th are the deaths directly attributable to the Hamas attack, not the number of excess deaths in Israel that day.
I'm not saying that if Israel causes a famine those deaths shouldn't count, but I am saying you have to show that the deaths are attributable to the war.
@Shai I appreciate the example. But with all the hospitals destroyed from the war, wouldn't a lot of normally preventable deaths be added to that category?
@Panfilo Sure, but you have to actually put forth an argument / an analysis, you can't just take the excess deaths and slap a "war casualties" label on them because that's the highest figure available.
@Shai the war in Gaza had a much, much bigger effect than the Hamas invasion of Israel, and the Gaza government was effectively destroyed. These are the circumstances where we switch to excess deaths as the most accurate numbers. It would make no sense to do the same for the Hamas attack, not least because random effects might mean that there were negative "excess deaths". The situations are different.
The market doesn't say "directly attributable". The use of Israeli sources should clear up any concerns about pro-Palestinian bias.
>These are the circumstances where we switch to excess deaths
Is it? I don't think that even in large wars (WW1/WW2 etc) the death toll is just the number of excess deaths those years. At most it is used as a tool to estimate the attributable deaths (which may be indirect). Maybe I'm wrong but I'd like to see examples if so.
@Shai it will resolve based off Israeli sources only. I suspect there will be consensus among Israeli newspapers as to what the number is at the end of the war and that’s what will be used for resolution. American, British, Chinese, Russian, etc, sources will not count.