The number of deaths in Gaza exceeds all Arab losses in wars with Israel in the past four decades

That estimate comes from a analysis from police and hospital files collected in 1982 by the An Nahar newspaper, which was among the most respected in the Arab world at the time. The death toll reached 17,825. But the newspaper said the number was most likely an undercount, and in 1982 The Times reported that “correctly counting the dead is virtually impossible” in Lebanon.

In the 1967 Middle East war, nearly 19,000 Egyptians, Syrians and others are estimated to have died fighting Israel, while a similar number — mostly Syrians and Egyptians — died in the 1973 war, according to The Associated Press. As with the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, the exact toll amounts for these wars are also unknown, but most of the dead were believed to have been combatants.

By contrast, Gaza’s health ministry, part of the Hamas-led government there, said on Wednesday that of the 19,667 deaths, about 70 percent were women and children. Gaza authorities never provide figures on how many of the dead are fighters.

Israel claims it has killed about 7,000 Hamas fighters, but has not explained how it arrived at that number.

The toll in Gaza is expected to rise significantly if the Palestinians manage to excavate the massive destruction caused by the war. A spokesman for the Gaza government said on Wednesday that in addition to the approximately 20,000 dead, 6,700 people were still missing. It is believed that many are still buried under the rubble.

“There is a good chance that many people missing under the rubble are determined to have been killed,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. For that reason, the death toll is “likely to rise even if the bombings stopped today,” he added.