A joint investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call and the Guardian has obtained a classified Israeli military intelligence database indicating that most Palestinians killed during the Gaza war were civilians, sharply contradicting Israel’s public claims. The database, maintained by the Israel Defense Forces’ Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman), names 47,653 Palestinians it considers Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives. By May 2025 it recorded 8,900 of those operatives as killed or probably killed. When compared with the Gaza Health Ministry’s overall death toll of 53,000 at the time, the figures imply that about 83 percent of the dead—roughly five out of every six people—were civilians. Conflict-data specialists say such a ratio is extraordinary in modern warfare. Therése Pettersson of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program said the proportion exceeds that documented in protracted conflicts in Syria and Sudan, and is rarely seen outside episodes of mass atrocity. The IDF confirmed the database’s existence but said the published numbers "do not reflect the data available in the IDF’s systems," without offering alternative figures. Israeli officials have previously asserted civilian-to-militant casualty ratios of 1:1 or 2:1 and have at times claimed to have killed more than 20,000 militants. The disclosure is likely to heighten international scrutiny of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, where humanitarian agencies and several governments have already warned of disproportionate harm to civilians and extensive destruction of infrastructure.