The Israel Defense Forces Artillery Corps fires shells at Gaza on July 18, 2014, after Israeli forces began a ground invasion into northern Gaza amid Operation Protective Edge. Photo: Miriam Alster/Flash90.

New research by a leading Israeli counter-terrorism think-tank indicates that during Operation Protective Edge, the six week long military conflict between Israel and the Hamas regime in Gaza, more terrorists were killed than civilians.

Out of  the 1,165 fatalities that have been examined by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, 157 of them are not yet identified as civilian or terrorist. Out of the remaining 1017 names, 528 were terrorists and 480 were civilians, a 52 percent-48 percent ratio.

The Center’s report is the eighth in a series analyzing the extent of the death toll in Gaza, as well as the civilian-military ratio among the casualties. As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the Center’s calculations indicate that almost 50 percent of those killed in Gaza during the conflict were terrorist operatives.

The latest report examines the period between July 25-29, just over a week after Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza began. It was a period that included a 12 hour humanitarian ceasefire which was unilaterally extended by Israel for 24 hours, despite the decision of Hamas to reject it. On July 26, the Palestinian death toll was reported to have climbed above 1,000.

UN figures put the final Palestinian death toll at more than 2,100, with civilians making up 70 percent of the casualties. Israel counters that the UN numbers are inaccurate and biased, largely because the United Nations bases its reports on numbers generated by advocacy groups working in Gaza as well as on figures generated by the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza.

During the war, 70 people were killed on the Israeli side, including 64 soldiers. Gaza health officials said more than 2,100 people were killed in the Strip in the fighting and many thousands more were wounded. Despite this toll, Israel’s Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the body responsible for running the Israeli border crossings with Gaza, confirmed that after the operation began on July 8, 959 tons of medicine and 5,359 trucks carrying goods entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing.