The total number of Palestinians killed from the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000 through 2026 reached about 85,597, according to data from the Shireen Observatory, which documents Israeli violations. Most of the deaths occurred in the Gaza Strip during successive Israeli wars and military operations, particularly the war that began on 7 October 2023.
Distribution of deaths between Gaza and the West Bank
The period covered by the monitoring began on 28 September 2000, when Ariel Sharon, then leader of the Israeli opposition and later prime minister, entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque surrounded by armed soldiers. Clashes broke out inside the mosque afterwards, killing seven Palestinians and injuring 250 others, as well as wounding 13 Israeli soldiers.
Those clashes sparked an intifada that spread to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Palestinian communities inside Israel, continuing until 2004. Its key developments included Israeli forces’ invasion of the West Bank and the siege of the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah.
According to Palestinian and Israeli statistics, the Al-Aqsa Intifada between 2000 and 2004 resulted in the deaths of about 4,412 Palestinians and injuries to around 48,300 others, while nearly 12,000 were arrested. Those years saw the assassination of prominent Palestinian leaders, including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, as well as Ismail Abu Shanab, Salah Shehadeh and Abu Ali Mustafa.
The first Gaza war after the intifada
On 27 December 2008, Israel launched a war on the Gaza Strip, calling it Operation Cast Lead, while Palestinian resistance groups in the territory called it the Battle of al-Furqan. The war lasted 23 days, killing more than 1,430 Palestinians, including over 400 children, 240 women and 134 police officers, and injuring more than 5,400 others.
The 2008–2009 war also completely or partially destroyed more than 10,000 homes. It was the first large-scale war in the Gaza Strip after the Al-Aqsa Intifada, before Israeli fighting and air strikes recurred in subsequent years. Another war began on 14 November 2012. Israel called it Operation Pillar of Defence, while the Palestinian resistance called it the Battle of the Baked Clay.
The confrontation lasted eight days, during which about 180 Palestinians were killed, including 42 children and 11 women, while around 1,300 others were injured. On 7 July 2014, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, to which the Palestinian resistance responded with a battle it called the Eaten Straw.
The confrontation lasted 51 days, during which Israeli forces carried out more than 60,000 air strikes on the Gaza Strip. The 2014 war killed 2,322 Palestinians and injured 11,000. It also killed members of 144 Palestinian families, with at least three people from each of those families killed, according to figures from the war.
Rising tensions and popular uprisings in 2015 and 2017
In the second half of 2015, tensions rose in Jerusalem amid repeated incursions by settlers and the Israeli army into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, and attacks on those maintaining a presence there and worshippers in retreat. Tensions increased after the Dawabsheh family was burned alive in the village of Duma in the northern West Bank.
Clashes intensified as incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque were repeated in September and October 2015, before what became known as the Knife Intifada began. The uprising started on 3 October, when Muhannad Halabi, a young man, carried out a stabbing attack in Jerusalem’s Old City that killed two settlers and seriously injured others.
In 2015, 150 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank, most of them in the final quarter of the year. Popular mobilisation continued afterwards, with the Prisoners’ Uprising beginning on 28 April 2017 in solidarity with a hunger strike by about 1,500 prisoners in Israeli jails protesting their detention conditions. Strikes and protests linked to the uprising continued for several days in various Palestinian areas.
On 16 July that year, another popular uprising began, marked by continuous sit-ins at the gates of the Al-Aqsa Mosque to oppose electronic gates installed by the Israeli authorities to search and screen worshippers. The mobilisation continued until 25 July 2017 and ended with the Israeli authorities reversing their decision on the electronic gates.
Fifteen Palestinians were killed during the uprising, while hundreds of others were injured. On the morning of 12 November 2019, an Israeli drone targeted a residential flat in Gaza City’s eastern Shuja'iyya neighbourhood, where Bahaa Abu al-Ata, commander of the Northern Area of the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, was present. The strike killed Abu al-Ata and his wife.
The assassination was followed by a confrontation known in Palestine as Operation Breaking Dawn, during which Israeli forces carried out several air strikes on the Gaza Strip. The strikes killed 34 Palestinians and injured more than 100 others, including Al-Quds Brigades members and large numbers of civilians.
In 2021, a confrontation broke out that the Palestinian resistance called the Sword of Jerusalem, while Israel called it Operation Guardian of the Walls. It followed settlers’ seizure of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood and Israeli forces’ raid on the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The 2021 war killed about 250 Palestinians and injured more than 5,000 others.
Israel also bombed several residential towers in the Gaza Strip and announced that it had destroyed about 100 kilometres of tunnels inside the territory. On 5 August 2022, Israel assassinated Tayseer al-Jabari, commander of the Northern Area of the Al-Quds Brigades in Gaza, after targeting him with a drone inside a residential flat in Palestine Tower in the Al-Rimal neighbourhood.
The resistance called the ensuing confrontation Unity of the Battlefields, while Israel called it Operation Breaking Dawn. The Gaza Health Ministry said the war killed 24 people, including six children, and injured 203 Palestinians to varying degrees from the start of Israeli air strikes on the territory.
At dawn on 7 October 2023, the Palestinian resistance launched an unprecedented attack on the settlements surrounding Gaza, calling it Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. That same day, Israel began its war on the Gaza Strip under the name Operation Swords of Iron, which was described as a genocidal war. By 22 September 2026, the war in Gaza had killed about 73,914 Palestinians and injured nearly 175,000.
Among those killed were 1,394 Palestinians who died after the ceasefire agreement took effect on 11 October 2025. In the West Bank, 1,206 Palestinians were killed and about 13,400 others injured, while Israeli forces arrested 24,600 Palestinians, all figures recorded through 14 September 2026.
These figures form part of a 26-year series of intifadas, uprisings and wars dating back to the events at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in September 2000.
