Fact check: What are the main causes of civilian deaths in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 2020?

1. Grabbing the Headlines: Escalations and Direct Hostile Action Drive Immediate Civilian Fatalities

Across the sources, the clearest proximate causes of civilian deaths are periodic escalations of armed hostilities: Israeli airstrikes, artillery and raids in Gaza and the West Bank, and rocket fire and other attacks by Palestinian armed groups into Israeli population centers. Human Rights Watch documented Israeli strikes in Gaza that killed civilians and called some strikes apparently unlawful, while other sources record hundreds of rockets fired into Israel that also endangered civilians ^{[2] [4]}. These episodes produce the largest short-term spikes in fatalities and destruction, displacing families and damaging critical infrastructure, and are consistently cited as immediate causes of civilian harm across reports ^{[1] [2]}.

2. The Occupation and Restrictions: A Chronic, Structural Driver of Civilian Harm

Reports emphasize a protracted protection crisis rooted in prolonged occupation, movement restrictions, settler expansion, home demolitions and checkpoints that shape everyday risks and access to care. The Humanitarian Needs Overview and human rights reports link Israeli policies — including severe movement limits and settlement-related demolitions — to ongoing civilian vulnerability and to conditions that entrench conflict dynamics ^{[1] [3]}. Those structural factors do not always produce headline fatalities but magnify harm over time by constraining medical access, economic survival and displacement options, accelerating both direct and indirect civilian deaths.

3. Internal Palestinian Divisions and Governance Failures Worsen Civilian Protection

Analyses point to internal political divisions between Palestinian authorities and armed groups as a factor that fragments protection and response capabilities. OCHA and UN summaries describe how split governance and weakened institutions in Gaza and the West Bank hinder consistent law enforcement, emergency response, and civilian protection, increasing exposure to violent escalations and complicating humanitarian access ^[1]. These governance gaps also contribute to impunity for some acts of violence and limit coordinated public-health and social-welfare responses during crises such as COVID-19, raising indirect mortality risks.

4. Pandemic, Poverty and Indirect Mortality: COVID-19 as an Accelerator of Risk

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated pre-existing humanitarian needs and heightened indirect causes of death by straining health systems, increasing poverty and food insecurity, and curtailing movement for medical care. UNICEF and humanitarian overviews document higher vulnerabilities among children and families, with pandemic-related deaths and the economic shock compounding the long-term protection crisis in Gaza and the West Bank ^{[5] [1]}. Indirect mortality from delayed care, malnutrition or reduced services is not always captured in conflict fatality tallies, yet sources identify COVID-19 as a significant amplifier of civilian harm since 2020.

5. Legal Findings and Accountability Gaps: Multiple Entities Allege War Crimes and Impunity

Human-rights organizations and international bodies report reasonable grounds to investigate potential war crimes by both Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups, while highlighting persistent impunity. The ICC prosecutor signalled that investigations into alleged crimes in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem were warranted; UN bodies and NGOs described patterns of killings by Israeli forces and harm from Palestinian rocket fire, calling attention to accountability deficits ^{[6] [7] [2]}. These findings reflect legal concern about conduct during hostilities and a frustrated international insistence that accountability is lacking at domestic levels.

6. Data, Bias and the Difficulty of Counting: Why Numbers Vary and Claims Clash

The sources show substantial variation in framing and figures, reflecting different mandates, methodologies and potential agendas. Humanitarian reports prioritize civilian protection and needs assessments, NGOs focus on alleged violations of law, and security or regional analyses emphasize incident trends — each producing different emphases and casualty tallies ^{[1] [8] [2]}. Treating all sources as biased, analysts must triangulate across humanitarian, legal and conflict-data providers to approach a balanced understanding; even then, underreporting, contested contexts and access limits make precise attribution of every civilian death difficult.

7. What’s Missing in Public Debates: Long-Term Health, Child Vulnerability and Displacement

Across the documents, less attention is paid to long-term health impacts, mental-health mortality links and protracted displacement, which quietly increase civilian mortality risks. UNICEF highlights millions of children in need and vulnerabilities exacerbated by conflict and COVID-19, but broader reporting rarely quantifies how chronic deprivation translates into excess mortality over time ^[5]. This omission matters because preventing future civilian deaths requires addressing chronic socioeconomic and health deficits as well as stopping episodic violence.

8. The Bottom Line: A Layered Causality Requiring Short- and Long-Term Remedies

Civilian deaths since 2020 result from a layered mix: direct lethal force during escalations (airstrikes, shootings, rockets), structural harms from occupation and restrictions, governance failures, legal impunity, and pandemic-accelerated humanitarian decline ^{[2] [1] [6]}. Addressing immediate lethality calls for urgent protection measures and restraint during hostilities; reducing long-term civilian mortality requires tackling movement restrictions, economic deprivation, accountability gaps and pandemic-era vulnerabilities.