Smoke and flames rise after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on May 12. (Haitham Imad/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
As a new round of violence between Israelis and Palestinians spirals toward all-out war, the death toll has grown increasingly lopsided.
On the Palestinian side, health officials say more than 100 people in the Gaza Strip, including more than 30 children, have been killed in Israeli military operations, including airstrikes and shelling. Israel has counted less than a dozen fatalities so far amid rocket attacks from Gaza.
Israel’s sophisticated antimissile defense system and far greater firepower play major roles in explaining the imbalance — as does the unusual geography of the Gaza Strip.
Gaza City is more densely populated than Tel Aviv and other major world cities like London and Shanghai, and much more so than the areas of Israel that surround it. That means that even targeted airstrikes in Gaza have a high likelihood of hitting civilians.
Locations hit by air and rocket strikes in Israel and Gaza since May 10
Petah Tikva
Tel Aviv
The Palestinian militant group Hamas fired several rockets. Air raid sirens were heard across the city.
ISRAEL
Med.
Sea
Ashdod
Al-Shati Camp
Buildings in a refugee camp in Gaza City were destroyed.
Ashkelon
Sderot
Beit Lahiya
Gaza City Center
Israeli airstrikes destroyed a residential building and two towers that housed media offices.
GAZA
Zeitoun
Khan Younis
Rafah
10 MILES
Locations hit by air and rocket strikes in Israel and Gaza since May 10
Petah Tikva
Tel Aviv
The Palestinian militant group Hamas fired several rockets. Air raid sirens were heard across the city.
ISRAEL
Med.
Sea
Ashdod
Al-Shati Camp
Buildings in a refugee camp in Gaza City were destroyed.
Ashkelon
Sderot
Beit Lahiya
Gaza City Center
Israeli airstrikes destroyed a residential building and two towers that housed media offices.
Zeitoun
GAZA
Khan Younis
10 MILES
Rafah
Locations hit by air and
rocket strikes in Israel
and Gaza since May 10
Tel Aviv
The Palestinian militant group Hamas fired several rockets. Air raid sirens were heard across the city.
Petah Tikva
A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed in a civilian neighborhood.
WEST
BANK
Mediterranean
Sea
Ashdod
Jerusalem
Al-Shati Camp
Buildings in a refugee camp in Gaza City were destroyed following an airstrike.
ISRAEL
Ashkelon
Beit Lahiya
Sderot
A Hamas rocket slammed into an apartment building and killed a child.
Gaza City Center
Israeli airstrikes destroyed a residential building and two towers that housed media offices.
GAZA
Zeitoun
Khan Younis
Rafah
EGYPT
10 MILES
Locations hit by air and rocket strikes in Israel and Gaza
since May 10
Tel Aviv
The Palestinian militant group Hamas fired several rockets. Air raid sirens were heard across the city.
WEST
BANK
Petah Tikva
A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed in a civilian neighborhood.
Mediterranean
Sea
Ashdod
Jerusalem
Al-Shati Camp
Buildings in a refugee camp in Gaza City were destroyed following an airstrike.
ISRAEL
Ashkelon
Beit Lahiya
Sderot
A Hamas rocket slammed into an apartment building and killed a child.
Gaza City Center
Israeli airstrikes destroyed a residential building and two towers that housed media offices.
GAZA
Zeitoun
Khan Younis
Rafah
EGYPT
10 MILES
Children are also frequently harmed in attacks because they make up an unusually high percentage of the population: UNICEF estimates that there are roughly 1 million children living in the Gaza Strip, meaning that a little under half of all 2.1 million people in Gaza are children.
The burden of such conflicts “is just ferociously on the shoulders of civilians, and mostly women and children,” said Dmytro Chupryna, deputy director of Airwars, an organization that monitors civilian casualties. “Most civilian casualties we see is when civilians are hiding in the basement, because there’s nowhere else to run.”
The Israeli communities that surround the Gaza Strip are far less dense. Farmland dots the landscape, contrasting with the crowded skyline of high-rise apartment buildings along much of the Gaza Strip.
Population density
Low
High
Nile
Delta
NORTH
Cairo
Mediterranean
Sea
Gaza
City
EGYPT
100 MILES
Tel Aviv
GAZA
ISRAEL
Beirut
WEST
BANK
Jerusalem
LEBANON
Amman
Damascus
JORDAN
SYRIA
Population density
Low
High
Nile
Delta
NORTH
Cairo
Mediterranean
Sea
EGYPT
Sinai
Peninsula
Gaza City
Tel Aviv
GAZA
ISRAEL
Beirut
WEST
BANK
Jerusalem
LEBANON
Amman
JORDAN
Damascus
100 MILES
SYRIA
Beirut
Population density
LEBANON
Low
High
Damascus
SYRIA
Mediterranean Sea
Tel Aviv
WEST
BANK
Amman
Gaza City
Jerusalem
GAZA
ISRAEL
EGYPT
JORDAN
Sinai
Peninsula
100 MILES
Cairo
Beirut
Population density
LEBANON
Low
High
Damascus
SYRIA
Mediterranean Sea
Tel Aviv
WEST
BANK
Amman
Gaza City
Jerusalem
GAZA
Alexandria
ISRAEL
EGYPT
JORDAN
Sinai
Peninsula
Suez
Cairo
100 MILES
Beirut
Population density
Low
High
LEBANON
Damascus
SYRIA
Mediterranean Sea
Tel Aviv
WEST
BANK
Amman
Gaza City
Jerusalem
GAZA
Alexandria
ISRAEL
JORDAN
EGYPT
Sinai
Peninsula
EGYPT
Suez
100 MILES
Cairo
Approximately 1.4 million of the residents of the Gaza Strip are Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency — well above half of the population. Refugee camps sprung up in the territory as Palestinians fled from the violence of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, and continued to grow as more Palestinians were displaced as a result of the second conflict in 1967.
A high birthrate and the arrival of new refugees from war-torn countries such as Syria in recent years means that the population has continued to swell — and the United Nations expects it to double in the next 30 years.
Roughly twice the size of the District of Columbia, the impoverished Palestinian territory is surrounded by Israel on almost all sides. It also shares a small land border with Egypt.
Gaza
City
Gaza
2.1 million
people
Washington D.C.
Khan
Younis
690,000
Rafah
5 MILES
Gaza
City
Gaza
2.1 million
people
Washington D.C.
Khan
Younis
690,000
Rafah
5 MILES
Living conditions in Gaza are bleak: 95 percent of the population does not have access to clean water, according to UNRWA, and electricity shortages periodically bring life to a halt. The territory has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, World Bank statistics show, and the United Nations estimates that roughly 80 percent of the population relies on international aid to survive and access basic services.
In an area as dense as Gaza, Chupryna said, airstrikes run the risk of having secondary effects, hitting already weak infrastructure and leaving civilians without power or water.
Israel restricts travel outside the Gaza Strip and also maintains a blockade by air, land and sea that it says is necessary to prevent Hamas from obtaining supplies that could be used for terrorism. But the blockade also tightly limits Palestinians’ access to basic supplies and food staples, and the U.N. estimates that it has cost the territory’s economy as much as $16.7 billion over 11 years.
Palestinians attend the funeral on May 13 of 15 people who were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City. (Haitham Imad/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
About this story
Sources: Satellite imagery via ESA Sentinel 2. Population density data is from WorldPop. Airstrike data is from Israel Defense Forces, Amnesty International, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Reuters. Population numbers for Israel and Gaza are from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (2019). Population for Washington, D.C., is from the U.S. Census.
Photo editing by Chloe Coleman. Copy editing by Vanessa H. Larson.
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