A newly released analysis hosted on the Harvard Dataverse has brought troubling clarity to Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. The report, authored by Israeli academic Yaakov Garb, estimates that nearly 377,000 Palestinians remain unaccounted for since the genocide began on October 2023.
Independent media and international bodies. including IMEMC News and the United Nations, have echoed and expanded upon these findings, painting a grimmer picture of widespread loss, failed humanitarian delivery, and war crimes.
Disappearing Populations
Garb’s data-driven population mapping reveals a drastic decline in Gaza’s population—from 2.227 million to roughly 1.85 million—indicating that hundreds of thousands may not simply be displaced, but dead, missing, or entombed beneath rubble.
|UN: “Gaza: Over 400 Palestinians Killed Around Private Aid Hubs”|
IMEMC News reports more than 55,000 confirmed fatalities, over 9,000 still missing, and approximately 129,000 wounded, underscoring the systemic collapse of reliable documentation and humanitarian record-keeping.
Militarized Aid and GHF Compounds
The Harvard report and IMEMC News highlight disturbing patterns in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a U.S.-backed aid initiative.
Garb critiques the layout of GHF aid compounds, positioned deep within the so-called buffer zones, as designed for population control rather than relief. These zones are highly militarized and largely inaccessible, exposing civilians to significant risk.
Since late May 2025, more than 410 Palestinians have been killed while attempting to reach these aid sites, according to IMEMC’s coverage and UN confirmations.
Victims were described as “shelled or shot” while queuing for aid, prompting UN officials to raise concerns about the systematic use of food access as a method of coercion and control—possibly constituting war crimes.
Fatal Funnels and Foreign Oversight
GHF sites are managed by private U.S.-based security contractors operating under Israeli military coordination.
Civilians are often funneled through narrow, unprotected corridors without infrastructure or medical support, a setup described by both reporters and aid organizations as a “fatal funnel”—one that imperils rather than protects.
Beyond the Numbers
While death tolls offer one metric, Garb’s findings, IMEMC’s reporting along with various media outlets and international organization point to a larger crisis: the entire collapse of Gaza’s civil society.
With hospitals failing, devastated and destroyed, food systems decimated, and clean water all but gone, the true cost of this siege includes not only the missing and the dead, but those slowly perishing from untreated wounds, famine, and systemic neglect.
Shireen observatory for human rights revealed that the number of slain Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, is more than 55,167, including at least 16,507 children, 9,803 women, 254 journalists, in addition to more than 9000 missing Palestinians, under the rubble in various parts of the devastated, destroyed and besieged Gaza Strip.
“Humanitarian principles need to be reinstated [in Gaza],” @UNLazzarini tells the media.
UNRWA teams in #Gaza continue to manage shelters, provide clean water, and remove waste. They are a model of what humanitarian work is and should be.
Let us bring in aid at scale. Let us… pic.twitter.com/lRPnY0Mz8t
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) June 24, 2025
Shireen Observatory notes that the data regarding the slain Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in incomplete due to the ongoing genocide and siege.
In the early morning hours Wednesday, at least 21 Palestinians, including children, and eight awaiting aid, were killed and dozens injured, in various parts of the Gaza Strip, Al-Jazeera report revealed.
The Israeli-American aid distribution model in #Gaza is putting lives at risk.
It is also a distraction from the ongoing atrocities and a waste of resources.
The humanitarian community in Gaza, including UNRWA, is ready and has the experience and expertise to reach people in… pic.twitter.com/KQil4Hp48t
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) June 11, 2025
Since October 7, 2023, Israeli soldiers and illegal paramilitary colonizers in the occupied West Bank have killed 994 Palestinians. Among the victims are 201 children, 21 adult women, and 15 elderly individuals. The toll also includes 28 detainees who died in Israeli prisons, and one journalist who was killed while reporting. Additionally, 239 of the slain remain in Israeli custody, with their bodies withheld from return to their families.
Out of the total number of fatalities, 25 were killed directly by illegal Israeli paramilitary colonizers, while 403 were slain during Israeli military invasions. Another 288 Palestinians were killed in targeted assassinations.
