Methodology

Rows

Each row is one death from the OCHA oPt casualties dashboard: Palestinian fatalities, area West Bank, perpetrator Israeli civilian settler, read month by month. The dashboard has no names, so a row is a month and a place.

Every run first re-reads 2023 and compares it with a locked copy. If the dashboard is offline, blank or different, nothing is published.

OCHA's sentences

For each row we read every OCHA report from the first day of the death's month to 60 days after it ends: OCHA's Protection of Civilians reports, then Flash Updates. A model proposes which sentences describe the death. Code then checks each one: it must appear word for word in the stored report, be one sentence or part of one, and have 40 words or fewer. A row that fails is held and listed.

Running totals (for example, the number of deaths since January) never tag a row. One such count of attackers is shown on its own.

Tags

A tag needs a sentence about this death that contains one of these phrases:

• Attacker claim: "stabbed" or "stabbing", "attacker", "attempted ... attack", "perpetrator"; or "reportedly", "allegedly" or "according to the Israeli military" together with a weapon or attack word. The last group shows as "alleged attacker".
• Perpetrator doubt: "by Israeli forces", "by a soldier", "settlers or forces".
• Two-sided clash: "threw stones at each other", or Palestinians and settlers both throwing stones or firing.

A sentence that states a number of deaths (for example "four were killed") is attached to at most that many rows.

A, B and C

• A: deaths the dashboard shows.
• B: A minus rows with an attacker claim in OCHA's text.
• C: B minus rows with doubt about the perpetrator in OCHA's text. C still includes two-sided clashes.

The three numbers show what each counting rule gives. None of them is an estimate of the true number, and none is a count of any legal status.

Use of OCHA material

OCHA's content is quoted with credit and a link, following the UN's terms for news-related material. The site does not offer a download of OCHA rows.