Words used here, and what they mean

This register uses a small number of terms that carry more than they appear to. Each one below is used in at least one entry. Nothing on this page interprets a finding — it defines a word.

Measuring and counting

Casualties — deaths and injuries together. When a source reports casualties, this register reports the two separately as well, because a casualty figure read as a death toll is wrong by an order of magnitude. Used in the West Bank entries: 69,312 casualties there means 1,092 deaths and 68,220 injuries.

Confidence interval — the range within which a statistical estimate is expected to fall. A figure given with one is not a count: it is an estimate, and the range is part of it. An estimate of 64,260 with an interval of 55,298 to 78,525 is not the same claim as “64,260 people died”.

Capture–recapture — a method that estimates how many cases are missing from every list by comparing several incomplete lists. It infers deaths absent from all of them; it does not identify individuals, and no name attaches to the number it produces.

Sensitivity analysis — the authors rerun their own calculation with different choices to show how much the result moves. When the spread across those choices is wider than the confidence interval, that spread is the real uncertainty.

Preprint / peer review — a preprint is published before other researchers have checked it. Where an entry rests on a preprint, it says so, and it says where the peer-reviewed version differs.

Erratum, correction — a notice published by the source after the fact. Where one exists on a document this register cites, the entry carries a banner saying so, even before anyone has read what it changes.

Land and planning

Dunam — a unit of area: 1,000 m², about a quarter of an acre. Kept rather than converted, because converting loses the figure the source gives.

Outpost (Hebrew מאחז, ma'ahaz) — the word the Hebrew sources use for communities that Peace Now counts apart from “settlements”. The International Court of Justice writes, in its advisory opinion of 19 July 2024 (para. 112), that “a distinction is sometimes made between “settlements” and “outposts”, the latter having been established in contravention of domestic Israeli law”, and that this distinction is “immaterial” for the purpose it examines. “Settlement” alone does not carry the word.

Settlement (Hebrew התנחלות, hitnahalut) — an Israeli community in the occupied territories. This register adds no legal characterisation to the word; where a legal term appears, it is attributed to whoever pronounced it.

Regularisation (Hebrew הכשרה, hakhshara) — the word Peace Now uses for the retroactive legalisation, under Israeli law, of an existing outpost: its summary of 2025 reports that “26 were the regularization of existing outposts”.

State land (Hebrew אדמות מדינה, admot medina) — an Israeli legal designation. The declaration itself is the contested act, so the term is always marked as the designation of one party, never used as a plain description.

Deposit and validation — two distinct stages of the Israeli planning procedure. Neither is a building permit, and neither means a house was built.

Firing zone — an area the Israeli military designates as closed to civilians without permanent residency.

Words that do not survive translation

شهيد (shahid) — the word the Palestinian Ministry of Health uses in its counts. This register renders it “killed” and carries the original word beside it, always both. “Martyr” would import a religious and militant charge that a statistical bulletin does not carry; dropping the word would hide what the source actually wrote.

Sources and documents

Party to the conflict — a government, ministry or army of one of the sides. Their figures are admissible here and none of them is neutral: every one is marked as a party's position, on all sides. A human rights organisation is not a party, but where it relays a party's figure, the chain is stated.

Advisory opinion — an opinion the International Court of Justice gives when an organ of the United Nations asks it a legal question. It is what the document calls itself.

Primary and secondary source — a primary source is the document that establishes a finding. A press article reporting that document is a secondary source. This register works from primary sources; where only a report of one is reachable, the entry says so in those words.

Locator — the exact place inside a document: a page, a section, a paragraph. Every entry has one. A report cited “in general” is not a source, and no entry is created without a locator.