According to the CIA, the Gaza Population *Grew* in 2024

Twenty five nations signed a declaration this week, condemning Israel’s war of self defense in Gaza — while staying utterly silent on the Syrian government’s massacre of its ethnic minorities and about a dozen other global tragedies.

I’ve made this point before, but it’s worth saying again: This may be the first “genocide” in history in which the population grew larger.

The Palestinian population in Gaza grew significantly since October 7, 2023, according to data from the CIA World Factbook.

This population growth includes the time period of Israel’s defensive war against the Hamas terror organization, which terror apologists (falsely) call a “genocide.”

Published by America’s Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA World Factbook shows a population in Gaza over the past three years of: 2022: 1,997,328; 2023: 2,098,389; and 2024: 2,141,643. This indicates a growth rate in Gaza over the past year of 2.06%, which is more than double the US growth rate during the same period, at only 0.98%.

How is it possible that Gaza’s population grew so much over that year?

Quite simply because Israel has been so incredibly cautious in its defensive military campaign against Hamas, and has provided such an overwhelming amount of humanitarian aid, that the number of people who died in Gaza was actually less than the number of new babies born

These numbers stand in stark contrast to misleading claims of “mass starvation” and “genocide,” all of which are not only untrue, but make no logical sense given the uncontested reality on the ground

Q&A:

Here are some arguments that (believe it or not) I have actually received on this topic, along with the accompanying answers, based in actual reality.

Argument: These figures are just Israeli propaganda.

Reality: The data on Gaza’s massive population growth comes from the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America.

Argument: The CIA figures are just projections and therefore not accurate.

Reality: This assertion is based on an unsupported claim from an agenda driven article on the Polifact website. (Instead of evidence, Polifact quoted a conjecture by an employee of the US Census Bureau, who does not work for the CIA or have actual knowledge of CIA methodology.) Furthermore, the Polifact article addressed early CIA figures from December 2024, whereas our article is based on the updated CIA figures from May 7, 2025.

Argument: The vast majority of casualties in Gaza are women and children.

Reality: No. Hamas used to claim that most casualties were women and children, and a number of international bodies continue to repeat that claim without independent investigation, even though it is now supported by neither Israeli intelligence nor even by Hamas’ own, revised figures.

As a rule, Hamas never distinguishes between civilians and combatants. Hamas’s “Gaza Ministry of Health” frequently makes dramatic press announcements and then later revises its figures retroactively, often removing thousands of names, or changing the relevant demographic information. One manual count of Hamas’ figures indicates that most of Gaza’s casualties were actually men of military age.

Argument: More than 50,000 people died in Gaza, making it one of the most deadly conflicts in history.

Reality: The Hamas terror organization, which is notoriously unreliable, claims a figure around that scale. Even if accurate, that number is far less than other conflicts in the region, such as Syria (over 650,000), Yemen (over 230,0000), and Afghanistan (over 270,000). In fact, the number of casualties in Gaza is so low that it is less than Gaza’s birth rate during the same period. Indeed, the civilian to combatant casualty ratio in Gaza is the among the lowest in human history for a conflict of this type, nine times less than the UN published global average, and experts note that Israel has set an entirely new standard for the level of care that is possible in urban warfare.

Argument: The death toll in Gaza is similar to the Holocaust on a per capita basis.

Answer: No. Throughout the six years between 1939 and 1945 the Jewish population of Europe decreased by over 60% and now, nearly a century later, the world Jewish population still has not fully recovered. (The global Jewish population on the eve of the Holocaust in 1939 stood at 16.9 million, versus today, at only 15.8 million.) By contrast, the Palestinian population in Gaza is growing.

Argument: The attacks of October 7 were the equivalent to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and an example of “resistance” which is permitted under international law.

Answer: No. Though we have written this numerous times in the past, it bears repeating: October 7, 2023, saw the largest murder of Jews since the Holocaust, as the Hamas terror organization, along with Palestinian civilians and UN staff, invaded Israel, killed over 1,200 people in approximately six hours, and took 251 hostage, all while committing mass torture, beheadings, and mass rape.

The pace of murder in that six hour period is hard to comprehend: had Hamas continued to kill at that rate (as it had intended), then by today, the death toll in Israel would would have reached over 3.1 million — an even faster pace of killing than that achieved by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

An estimated 50 Israeli hostages remain in captivity in Gaza, with approximately 20 of them believed to still be alive, enduring starvation and torture.

Nothing in international law permits such acts by any person or organization, under any circumstances, for any reason. The only thing comparable to the Holocaust in Gaza is the attempt by Hamas and other terror organizations to annihilate the Jewish people from the Earth, along with their astonishing capacity to simultaneously lie about it to the world.

Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.