A former Israeli military chief has admitted that more than 200,000 Palestinians have been killed or injured in Gaza since October 2023.
Retired commander of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Herzi Halevi, has acknowledged the staggering human cost of the Gaza war, confirming that more than 200,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded since the fighting began nearly two years ago. Halevi, who stepped down as chief of staff in March, made the comments during a community meeting in southern Israel earlier this week.
Halevi, who led the IDF for the first 17 months of the war, told residents of the Ein HaBesor moshav that more than 10 per cent of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents had been killed or injured. “More than 200,000 people,” he said, adding: “This isn’t a gentle war. We took the gloves off from the first minute. Sadly not earlier.”
He reinforced the point by stating, “No one is working gently,” suggesting that from the outset Israel pursued a strategy of overwhelming force. His figures closely track those published by Gaza’s health ministry, which reports 64,718 Palestinians killed and 163,859 injured since 7 October 2023. Many thousands more are feared to be buried under rubble. Israeli officials have long dismissed the ministry’s statistics as “Hamas propaganda”, but international humanitarian agencies including the UN have assessed them as broadly reliable and accurate.
The health ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its casualty counts. However, leaked Israeli military intelligence data from earlier this year suggested that more than 80 per cent of those killed were civilians.
The scale of destruction has left entire neighbourhoods flattened and forced hundreds of thousands into makeshift shelters.
Israel had no legal oversight
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Israel’s genocidal war erupted following the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October, 2023, which killed around 1,200 Israelis, mostly military personnel and reservists. Halevi argued that Israel should have taken a tougher stance on Gaza even before that attack.
Although Israel has repeatedly claimed that its operations are conducted in line with international humanitarian law, Halevi’s remarks appeared to contradict those assurances. He said that during his tenure as chief of staff, “not once” was his decision-making constrained by legal advice.
“Not once has anyone restricted me. Not once. Not the military AG [advocate general Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi] who, by the way, hasn’t the authority to restrict me,” he told the meeting.
Halevi’s comments suggest that military lawyers played no binding role in operational planning.
According to a report by Ynet, he implied that the main function of legal advisers was not to limit military action, but to provide a defence for it internationally. “There are legal advisers who say: We will know how to defend this legally in the world, and this is very important for the state of Israel,” he was quoted as saying.
Criticisms
His remarks drew sharp criticism from Israeli human rights advocates. Michael Sfard, a lawyer who has represented Palestinians in cases against the government, said Halevi’s statements showed that legal oversight was little more than a formality. “The generals see them as ‘regular’ advisers whose advice one can adopt or dismiss, not as professional lawyers whose legal positions present the boundaries of what is permissible and what is prohibited,” Sfard argued.
The issue of legal advice has surfaced repeatedly in recent months. On Wednesday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Halevi’s successor, Eyal Zamir, ignored legal counsel over the displacement of Gaza City residents. The military advocate general, Tomer-Yerushalmi, had reportedly advised against ordering one million people to evacuate before facilities in the south were ready to receive them. Despite this, the IDF pressed ahead with its evacuation orders.
The consequences of those decisions remain visible. Many of the 40 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on Friday were people who had been unable or unwilling to leave Gaza City. Some had chosen to remain in their homes despite the risk, while others feared that moving south would leave them without protection against further bombing.
The IDF has not commented on Halevi’s remarks about casualty figures or the role of military lawyers. His admission, however, represents one of the most candid acknowledgements by a senior Israeli figure of the scale of Gaza’s suffering.
For many Palestinians, the confirmation of over 200,000 casualties is not new but underscores what they have been experiencing daily for nearly two years. Entire families have been wiped out, hospitals are overwhelmed, and aid agencies continue to warn of a humanitarian catastrophe with no end in sight.
