Did a ‘Harvard report' reveal 377,000 Gazans are ‘missing'? The number has been misinterpreted

France 24

4 days ago

'A Harvard report reveals that 377,000 people are missing in Gaza (probably dead under the rubble),' published Abdal Karim Ewaida, Palestinian ambassador to the Ivory Coast, on X, who maintained that this figure 'is based on Israeli military data'.
The figure was also shared by media outlets such as Middle East Monitor and The New Arab, and by hard-left France Unbowed MP Rima Hassan on Instagram.
On X, many accounts have also shared the visual of this number taken from the account of Palestinian Jimmy J (see front page photo), whose post has already garnered almost 1.5 million views.
An Israeli study, not from Harvard University
All these publications refer to a "Harvard report". But no Harvard report has published such results.
In fact, the study everyone is pointing to is by Yaakov Garb, a researcher at Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Published on June 3, 2025, the report does not deal with the dead and missing during the war in Gaza, but with the problems linked to the humanitarian aid distribution centres set up by Israel at the end of May with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
This study does not come from Harvard University. However, it was published on the Harvard Dataverse, an online repository managed by Harvard University for researchers to make their publications and databases available.
As for the number in question, it actually stems from a misreading of this study published in a blog post on Medium. On June 10, an internet user named 'Maximilian' published on this platform an analysis of Garb's study entitled 'The grim arithmetic: IDF data reveals 377,000 Palestinians unaccounted for'.
Although this figure was never published by Garb, 'Maximilian' claimed to have found an 'unspoken number', backing up their analysis by referring to the maps published in the study.
The maps showed three population 'clusters' on the territory whose population the Israeli army announced at the end of May it wanted to displace. They indicated the number of inhabitants in each of the "clusters": Gaza City, with a population of 1 million people, the coastal region of Al-Mawasi, with 500,000 residents, and the centre of the Gaza Strip, with 350,000. This totals 1.85 million inhabitants.
'Maximilian' deduced that by subtracting the number of inhabitants of Gaza before October 7, i.e. 2.227 million inhabitants according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, you end up with 377,000 'missing' Gazans.
An error in the map: 700,000 inhabitants in Al-Mawasi, not 500,000
What can we say about this conclusion? Contacted by the FRANCE 24 Observers team on June 24, Yaakov Garb said he was initially surprised by this 'strange misreading' of the figures given by the Israeli army at the end of May 2025.
As stated in the article, 'the population estimates in the enclaves are from IDF sources reported in the media'. The article also states that these clusters 'are very approximate indications of the three enclaves of Gazan populations'.
But after rechecking the figures on his map against the Israeli army's announcement, he realised that there was a typo in the figures for Al-Mawasi: the number given by the Israeli army and reported in the media was actually 700,000 inhabitants, and not 500,000. "I'm going to correct that immediately," he told FRANCE 24 Observers, explaining that he would issue a revised version of his article.
He added: 'My main argument in this map was that most of the population (the one million inhabitants of Gaza and a large proportion of those in the central zone) is far from the location of the humanitarian compounds, which remains the case. I didn't even assume that this was the entire population of Gaza – that the figures add up to 100% - but simply a representation of the central concentrations.'
'It's a bit worrying that someone would rely on a typo in a map as evidence of genocide without first asking," he continued. "There are enough horrible things happening in Gaza that this kind of echo chamber amplification of a typo doesn't help anyone.'
This error explains the misunderstandings and misinterpretations, since the Israeli army counted 2,050,000 Gazans, not 1,850,000.
56,077 Gazans killed, 11,000 missing, 100,000 fleeing
But what do we know about the exact figures of those killed, displaced, or missing in Gaza?
According to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, 56,077 Gazans have been killed – and 131,848 wounded – since October 7, 2023, according to the June 24, 2025 count.
About casualty figures from Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry:
Gaza's health ministry collects data from the enclave's hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The health ministry does not report how Palestinians were killed, whether from Israeli airstrikes and artillery barrages or errant Palestinian rocket fire. It describes all casualties as victims of 'Israeli aggression'.
The ministry also does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Throughout four wars and numerous skirmishes between Israel and Hamas, UN agencies have cited the Hamas-run health ministry's death tolls in regular reports. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Palestinian Red Crescent also use the numbers.
In the aftermath of war, the UN humanitarian office has published final death tolls based on its own research into medical records. The UN's counts have largely been consistent with the Gaza health ministry's, with small discrepancies.
For more on the Gaza health ministry's tolls, click here.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)
The death toll in Gaza could even be higher than that published by the Gaza health ministry, according to a study published in January by British medical journal The Lancet.
The study, which covered the first nine months of the war between Israel and Hamas – from October 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024 – estimated that the death toll in Gaza is around 40% higher than that recorded by the Palestinian territory's health ministry.
According to the latest available figures published at the end of 2024 by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 100,000 people have also left the Gaza Strip since the start of the war.
To this day, many uncertainties remain as to the number of missing persons still under the rubble. According to local reports put forward by the UN on April 20, 2025, this figure is expected to exceed 11,000 people.
On June 20, 2025, the UN estimated that 1.9 million people had been displaced since the start of the war, representing 90% of Gaza's population.