(PRWEB) July 31, 2002
Counting Fatalities in the Middle East Conflict: STATSÂ Response
Subject: Between the start of the second Intifada almost two years ago and the end of June, the war had killed 561 Israelis and 1,499 Palestinians.
10 Second Response: These casualty numbers obscure the true nature of the conflict. A new study, which distinguished combatants from noncombatants, found that 579 non-combatant Palestinians (just over 38 percent of all Palestinian casualties) were killed by Israelis and 433 non-combatant Israelis (about 80 percent of all Israeli casualties) were killed by Palestinians.
30 Second Response: The new study from the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) demonstrates that, while Israeli casualties made up about 27 percent of the total fatalities (as they are usually reported in the media), they actually represented about 43 percent of the non-combatant fatalities. Instead of making the shaky differentiation between civilians and non-civilians, the ICT examined the casualties of each incident to figure out who killed whom and who did what. If these numbers gain wide acceptance as a truer depiction of what is happening in Israel than the numbers more usually quoted, their effect on public opinion worldwide could be dramatic.
Background: (1) The ICT devised several specific categories, later summarized into combatant and non-combatant estimates. In the final ICT analysis, only violent protestors, full combatants and probable (meaning likely but not proven) combatants were counted as combatants. All others, including the fourth of all Palestinian cases where no evidence was available, counted as noncombatants. And this set-up does not even take into account people killed by their own side. Approximately 189 Palestinians were killed while committing a suicide bombing, in Âwork accidents, in intra-Palestinian conflict, or as so-called Âcollaborators.Â
(2) Limitations in the ICT analysis may have actually resulted in an over-estimate of Palestinian non-civilian casualties. While Israeli fatalities are reliably detailed in both Israeli and foreign media and official government web sites, Palestinian ones are harder to verify. In a great many cases, the ICT gave Palestinian casualties the benefit of the doubt as non-combatants.
(3) The figures make a pretty strong case that the Israelis have not noticeably targeted Palestinian noncombatants, while the Palestinians have overwhelmingly targeted noncombatants. However, those who would charge the Israelis with indiscriminately targeting women and children have little evidence to back up their argument in these figures. While 39 percent of the Israeli noncombatants killed by Palestinians were female, only about 7 percent of the Palestinian noncombatants killed by Israelis were female. Although children appear more prominently among the Palestinian fatalities, combatant and noncombatant, most were teenage boys (over the age of 11).
FOR MORE INFO ONLINE: http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/defensewrapper.jsp?PID=1051-350&CID=1051-072902A
CONTACT: Howard Fienberg, Senior Analyst with the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS). STATS is a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization dedicated to improving the use of scientific information in public policy debates.