On 18 February 2026, the medical journal Lancet Global Health published a detailed study on the killings of Palestinians in Gaza during the Zionist genocide. Significantly revising upwards the toll of violent deaths, the study corroborates the proportion of civilian killings reported by the resistance-run Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH). In the context of renewed US-led attempts to destroy the people of Gaza and the ongoing genocide, both backed by British imperialism, these inhuman conditions should fuel intensified campaigning on an anti-imperialist basis.
The Lancet research was conducted by Palestinians in Gaza, who surveyed a representative group of 2,000 families across the Strip, interviewing family members about war deaths in their households. The report estimates that, between 7 October 2023 and 5 January 2025, there were 75,200 violent deaths as a direct result of Israeli actions, in addition to up to 20,200 ‘non-violent’ deaths, including famine, illness and other factors. Estimates of violent deaths were more than 25% higher than those found by the MoH, comprising around 3.4% of Gaza’s population, and with women, children and elderly people constituting 56.2% of those killed.
By 18 February 2026, MoH figures show that more than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed by occupation forces in Gaza in the period since the Lancet survey, including at least 601 since the October 2025 ceasefire agreement. A conservative estimate would therefore put the number of Gaza residents slaughtered by the Zionist genocide at over 100,000. Even these new figures may only be scratching the surface. Sammy Zahrana and Ghassan Abu-Sittah wrote in The Lancet in November 2025 that: ‘The limiting of mortality data to direct traumatic injury deaths and ascertainment biases suggest that estimates of life-years lost are conservative.’
Imperialist media, politicians and social chauvinists eye Palestinians’ reports of massacres with suspicion or total ignorance. A senior Israeli military force told journalists in late January that reports by the Hamas-led MoH were accurate. Actually, MoH statements are clear that their statistics are incomplete, referring constantly to the unknown numbers of victims lying under the rubble of bombed-out buildings, and with entire areas inaccessible to search teams as Zionism partitions the Strip. Israeli sources claimed that the proportion of ‘non-combatant’ deaths was hard to ascertain, but the Lancet survey showed clearly that the proportion of women, children and elderly people reported by the MoH was strikingly accurate.
Palestinian and regional resistance factions now face the task of regrouping to confront the Trump-led ‘Board of Peace,’ as imperialism plots intervention in Gaza where the Zionist genocide has failed. Labour foreign secretary Yvette Cooper made the position of British imperialism clear in her statement to the UN Security Council on 18 February. Vocally supporting the BoP as the route to destroying ‘terrorist infrastructure’ and ‘render[ing] Hamas irrelevant,’ Cooper attempted to weld the ‘inalienable rights of the Palestinian people’ to ‘steadfast’ British support for the Zionist entity. Feigning support for Palestinian ‘statehood’ while backing outright colonisation only means more bloody massacres, repression and torture. It remains the duty of communists and revolutionaries to build solidarity with the resistance and destroy the imperialist death machine.
International webinar: Free Palestine! Fight state repression!
Sunday 1 March 2026, 16:00pm GMT
📍Online or at watch parties across Britain
⏰ 4PM
🗓️Sunday 1 March
🔗 Ticket link: https://bit.ly/soas2webinar/
The movement in solidarity with Palestine is under attack. Across Europe and North America, states have ramped up their efforts to criminalise and imprison activists in order to crush resistance to their imperialist support for Israel. This repression needs to be met with militant resistance not just in the courts, but in the streets. This webinar will discuss this most recent wave of repression, seeking to answer the question: why is imperialism so threatened by Palestine and its resistance?
We will hear from:
📣Frank Magennis, lawyer at Riverway to the Sea, representing Palestine solidarity activists & part of the team that applied for Hamas to be deproscribed
📣 Charlotte Kates, international coordinator of Samidoun, the Palestinian prisoners’ network, which has been banned in Canada
📣 Momodou Taal, a PhD student activist who faced deportation from the US for his activism
📣 Sarah of the SOAS2, a student facing terrorism charges for speaking out in support of the Palestinian resistance
📣 Palestine on Trial, a Germany-based court support group
Join our watch parties:
LONDON: May Day Rooms, 88 Fleet Street, EC4Y 1DH
BIRMINGHAM: EthyOn Cafe, B2 5EN
NOTTINGHAM: Lincolnshire Poacher, NG1 3FR
MANCHESTER: Dulcimer Bar, 567 Wilbraham Road, M210AE
