The estimated population of the Gaza Strip for 2023 was around 2.1 million people. The Palestinian population of Gaza is relatively young when compared globally. More than half of Gazans are 19 years or younger. This is due to the comparably high fertility rate in the Gaza Strip of *** children per woman as of 2022.

The total population in Palestine was forecast to continuously increase up to more than 5.4 million people by 2023. The current total population is estimated to amount to 5.48 million people in 2023, however these estimates have not yet been adjusted to account for the impact of the 2023 Israel-Hamas War.

This report and dataset describe one area of intensive Israeli military earthworks activity subsequent to the end of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on March 18, 2025. It focuses on the surroundings of a compound of 81,000 m2 (81 dunam) in the very northwest corner of the Gaza strip (marked as object 1 in the inset box in Figure 1 below). The activity in southern Gaza—including this area in particular —are significant in light of the declared new phase of Israeli army efforts following after the renewal of full-scale conflict on March 18. As described here, this phase new phase of the war, as sweepingly outlined by Israeli government officials, including intensive ground, air, and sea attacks, the relocations of populations to the southern part of the Gaza Strip, and more permanent occupation by Israeli forces, as described below. The rapid progress and the high level of clearance and leveling, the new access road, and the strategic positioning of this compound all suggest it is intended to take on a significant role in the intended next phase, possibly related to aid distribution and population sorting and separation. Given the considerable chaos and churn in overarching development and Israel’s announcements, it is important to examine actual developments on the ground for a more solid sense of Israel’s intentions and commitments. This is the intention of the maps and data in this document and accompanying files, which will be updated and augmented as developments warrant. This continues a series of reports and deposits of geospatial data related to Israeli military activity in the Gaza Strip providing up-to-date spatial inputs requested by international humanitarian NGOs, Gazan residents, and the media.

Abstract

The survey is designed to collect, analyze and disseminate demographic and health data pertaining to the Palestinian population living in the Palestinian territory, with a focus on demography, fertility, family planning and maternal and child health.

Geographic coverage

The data are representative at region level (West Bank, Gaza Strip), locality type (urban, rural, camp)

Analysis unit

Household Individual

Universe

The survey covered all the Palestinian households who are a usual residence in the Palestinian Territory.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

Sample frame and sample design: The list of all Palestinian households has been constructed by updating some identification variables from the data collected through the Population Census of 1997. The master sample was drawn up to be used for different sample surveys. It consists of 481 enumeration areas (EA) (the average size of about 150 households). The master sample was the sample frame for the current Demographic and Heath Survey of 2004. The selected EA were divided into small units called cells (with an average size of 25 households). One cell per EA was selected.

The sample type was a stratified two-stage random sample: First stage: 260 EAs were selected from all Palestinian territory. Second stage: A systematic random sample of 25 households was selected from each EA in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. For the part of Jerusalem that was annexed by Israel after the 1967 war, 30 households were selected from each EA.

Sample size: The number of households in the sample was 6,574 households: 4,456 in the West Bank and 2,118 in the Gaza Strip.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The questionnaire was consisted of the following parts:

• Household part: consisted household roster including demographic variables such as age, sex, date of birth, smoking, health insurance,disability, child labor for children aged 10 years and over and education section for persons aged 5-17 years.
• Dwelling part: including questions on housing conditions such as main drinking water source, iodized salt and other socio-economic indicators. -Women (15-54 years) questionnaire
• Women part: this part was designed to collect data from all ever-married women 15-54 years old. It consists of seven sections: Reproduction, Contraception, Pregnancy and Breast Feeding, Tetanus Toxoid (TT), Health Awareness and Public Health, Awareness of AIDS, Fertility Preference.
• Child part: this part was designed to collect data from all children aged less than 5 years, it consists Child Education, Child health and Immunization, and Anthropometry.

Cleaning operations

Data editing took place at a number of stages through the processing including:

1. office editing and coding
2. during data entry
3. structure checking and completeness
4. structural checking of SPSS data files

Response rate

The survey sample consists of about 6,574 households of which 5,799 households completed the interview; whereas 3,746 households from the West Bank and 2,053 households in Gaza Strip. Weights were modified to account for non-response rate. The response rate in the West Bank reached 84.1% while in the Gaza Strip it reached 96.9%. The response rate in the Palestinian Territory reached 88.2%.

Sampling error estimates

Detailed information on the sampling Error is available in the Survey Report downloadable under the "Documentation" tab.

Data appraisal

Detailed information on the data appraisal is available in the Survey Report downloadable under the "Documentation" tab.

As of end-July 2025, 61,158 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel's invasion in October 2023. Of the 60,199 bodies officially identified, almost 46 percent (27,605) were men aged 18–59 years. Prewar estimates put the share of Gaza's population under 18 years at 47 percent, and this group makes up 31 percent of identified fatalities.

Jews were the dominant religious group in the Israel-Palestine region at the beginning of the first millennia CE, and are the dominant religious group there today, however, there was a period of almost 2,000 years where most of the world's Jews were displaced from their spiritual homeland. Antiquity to the 20th century Jewish hegemony in the region began changing after a series of revolts against Roman rule led to mass expulsions and emigration. Roman control saw severe persecution of Jewish and Christian populations, but this changed when the Byzantine Empire adopted Christianity as its official religion in the 4th century. Christianity then dominated until the 7th century, when the Rashidun Caliphate (the first to succeed Muhammad) took control of the Levant. Control of region split between Christians and Muslims intermittently between the 11th and 13th centuries during the Crusades, although the population remained overwhelmingly Muslim. Zionism until today Through the Paris Peace Conference, the British took control of Palestine in 1920. The Jewish population began growing through the Zionist Movement after the 1880s, which sought to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Rising anti-Semitism in Europe accelerated this in the interwar period, and in the aftermath of the Holocaust, many European Jews chose to leave the continent. The United Nations tried facilitating the foundation of separate Jewish and Arab states, yet neither side was willing to concede territory, leading to a civil war and a joint invasion from seven Arab states. Yet the Jews maintained control of their territory and took large parts of the proposed Arab territory, forming the Jewish-majority state of Israel in 1948, and acheiving a ceasefire the following year. Over 750,000 Palestinians were displaced as a result of this conflict, while most Jews from the Arab eventually fled to Israel. Since this time, Israel has become one of the richest and advanced countries in the world, however, Palestine has been under Israeli military occupation since the 1960s and there are large disparities in living standards between the two regions.

As of July 16. 2025, over 58,500 Palestinians have been directly killed by Israel's 20-month-long invasion of Gaza. The early months of the conflict saw the largest number of fatalities, with over 30,000 deaths recorded within the first five months, and an average of approximately 1,600 deaths per month thereafter. 55,000 deaths is equal to approximately two percent of Gaza's prewar population. Additionally, there have been almost 140,000 recorded injuries. Many injuries go unreported due to limited healthcare resources and capacity. Attacks on hospitals, medical shortages, and electricity outages, and many other factors, have severely impeded the medical response to the war. Many operations are conducted without anesthetic and antibiotics, and Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world. The true death toll? The United Nations and many humanitarian organizations believe the Gaza Health Ministry's (GHM) figures to be a significant undercount, with thousands of Gazans still unaccounted for. The GHM also does not include deaths of those who die due to preventable causes, such as disease, malnutrition, or disruptions to healthcare services. Some estimates from the past year have been in excess of 100,000 deaths. Trustworthiness of the Gaza Health Ministry's figures These figures come from the Gaza Health Ministry. There were some claims this source was untrustworthy in the war's early stages, especially following comments made by President Joe Biden; however, both the U.S. and Israeli intelligence services have since deemed these figures to be generally reliable. Nonetheless, the U.S. House of Representatives controversially passed an amendment in mid-2024 that would prevent the U.S. government from citing the GHM's figures.

According to estimates for 2023, the fertility rate in Gaza was **** children per woman. Compared to the fertility rate of 2005, the fertility rate of Gazan women has decreased by almost half. The fertility rate describes the average number of children a woman gives birth to, given a constant average child-bearing age between 15 and 49 years.