Second Intifada - Casualties - Combatant Versus Noncombatant Deaths

Combatant Versus Noncombatant Deaths

See also: Civilian casualties in the Second Intifada

Regarding the numbers of Israeli civilian versus combatant deaths, B'Tselem reports that through April 30, 2008 there were 719 Israeli civilians killed and 334 Israeli security force personnel killed. In other words, 31.7% of those killed were Israeli security force personnel, while 68.3% were civilians.

B'Tselem reports that through April 30, 2008, out of 4,745 Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces, there were 1,671 "Palestinians who took part in the hostilities and were killed by Israeli security forces," or 35.2%. According to their statistics, 2,204 of those killed by Israeli security forces "did not take part in the hostilities," or 46.4%. There were 870 (18.5%) who B'Tselem defines as "Palestinians who were killed by Israeli security forces and it is not known if they were taking part in the hostilities."

The B'Tselem casualties breakdown's reliability was questioned and its methodology has been heavily criticized by a variety of institutions and several groups and researchers, most notably Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs's senior researcher, retired IDF lieutenant colonel Jonathan Dahoah-Halevi, who claimed that B'Tselem is repeatedly classifies terror operatives and armed combatants as "uninvolved civilians", but also criticized the Israeli government for not collecting and publishing casualty data. Caroline B. Glick, deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post and former advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu, pointed to several instances where, she claimed, B'tselem had misrepresented Palestinian rioters or terrorists as innocent victims, or where B'tselem failed to report when an Arab allegedly changed his testimony about an attack by settlers. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), which said that B'tselem repeatedly classified Arab combatants and terrorists as civilian casualties. The NGO Monitor complained that B'tselem distorts its data and uses "abusive and demonizing rhetoric designed to elicit political support for Palestinians".

The Israeli International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism (IPICT), on the other hand, in a "Statistical Report Summary" for September 27, 2000 through January 1, 2005 indicates that 56% (1542) of the 2773 Palestinians killed by Israelis were combatants. According to their data, an additional 406 Palestinians were killed by actions of their own side. 22% (215) of the 988 Israelis killed by Palestinians were combatants. An additional 22 Israelis were killed by actions of their own side.

IPICT counts "probable combatants" in its total of combatants. From their full report in September 2002:

"A 'probable combatant' is someone killed at a location and at a time during which an armed confrontation was going on, who appears most likely – but not certain – to have been an active participant in the fighting. For example, in many cases where an incident has resulted in a large number of Palestinian casualties, the only information available is that an individual was killed when Israeli soldiers returned fire in response to shots fired from a particular location. While it is possible that the person killed had not been active in the fighting and just happened to be in the vicinity of people who were, it is reasonable to assume that the number of such coincidental deaths is not particularly high. Where the accounts of an incident appear to support such a coincidence, the individual casualty has been given the benefit of the doubt, and assigned a non-combatant status."

In the same 2002 IPICT full report there is a pie chart (Graph 2.9) that lists the IPICT combatant breakdown for Palestinian deaths through September 2002. Here follow the statistics in that pie chart used to come up with the total combatant percentage through September 2002:

Combatants	Percent of all Palestinian deaths
Full Combatants	44.8%
Probable Combatants	8.3%
Violent Protesters	1.6%
Total Combatants	54.7%

On August 24, 2004, Haaretz reporter Zeev Schiff published casualty figures based on Shin Bet data. The Haaretz article reported: "There is a discrepancy of two or three casualties with the figures tabulated by the Israel Defense Forces."

Here is a summary of the figures presented in the article:

• Over 1,000 Israelis were killed by Palestinian attacks in the al-Aqsa Intifada.
• Palestinians sources claim 2,736 Palestinians killed in the Intifada.
• The Shin Bet has the names of 2,124 Palestinian dead.
• Out of the figure of 2,124 dead, Shin Bet assigned them to these organizations:
  • 466 Hamas members
  • 408 Fatah's Tanzim and al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades
  • 205 Palestinian Islamic Jihad
  • 334 of "Palestinian security forces – for example, Force 17, the Palestinian police, General Intelligence, and the counter security apparatus"

The article does not say whether those killed were combatants or not. Here is a quote:

"The Palestinian security forces – for example, Force 17, the Palestinian police, General Intelligence, and the counter security apparatus – have lost 334 of its members during the current conflict, the Shin Bet figures show."

As a response to IDF statistics about Palestinian casualties in the West Bank, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem reported that two thirds of the Palestinians killed in 2004 did not participate in the fighting.

Prior to 2003, B'Tselem's methodology differentiated between civilians and members of Palestinian military groups, rather than between combatants and non-combatants, leading to criticism from some pro-Israel sources. B'Tselem no longer uses the term "civilian" and instead describes those killed as "participating" or "not participating in fighting at the time of death",

Others argue that Palestinian National Authority has, throughout the Intifada, placed unarmed men, women, children and the elderly in the line of fire, and that announcing the time and place of anti-occupation demonstrations via television, radio, sermons, and calls from mosque loudspeaker systems is done for this purpose.

In 2009, historian Benny Morris' stated in his retrospective book One States, Two States that about one third of the Palestinian deaths up to 2004 had been civilians.