Has Gaza’s population grown 2% since Oct. 7, 2023? No, that figure was projected before the war

Human rights nonprofit Amnesty International released a Dec. 5 report that found Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. Israel and the U.S. have both denied the charge, Reuters reported. And some social media users rebutted the claim of genocide by pointing to inaccurate data about Gaza’s population.

"Breaking News! The CIA World Factbook just released this: The population in Gaza has increased by 2.02% since Oct. 7, 2023," a person in a Dec. 5 Instagram video says. The person also calls Amnesty International "liars" for saying there’s a genocide in Gaza.

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

The CIA’s World Factbook did estimate the 2024 population growth rate of the Gaza strip at 2.02%. But that estimate is based on growth projections from August 2023, before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza.

The World Factbook’s website said its population data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau. Its estimate matches the bureau’s International Population Estimates and Projections released Aug. 8, 2023. The bureau said its population data estimates and projections for the Gaza Strip come from a 2017 census.

Census Bureau spokesperson Kristina Barrett told PolitiFact that although the CIA Factbook citation page says it sources data from the Census Bureau, she could not independently confirm its data source. If the CIA World Factbook used census data, she said it would come from the August 2023 International Population Estimates and Projections. Barrett said that data was published before the conflict started.

The CIA did not respond to multiple questions from PolitiFact about where it sourced its population growth rates.

We cross-referenced all 227 of the CIA Factbook’s 2024 population growth rates and found all but 32 matched the ones in the Census Bureau’s 2023 population estimates and projections.

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And contrary to the Facebook post, the CIA’s 2.02% population growth estimate was not recently released. A web-archived version of the website shows that figure has been on the website since at least July 18.

The United Nations reported in July that Gaza’s current population decreased by 200,000 from the region’s projected 2024 population. The same report found that about 110,000 Palestinians left Gaza through Egypt during the Israel-Hamas war, border authorities said.

More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, Gaza’s health ministry said in August. PolitiFact previously reported that the United Nations cannot independently verify Gaza’s death toll because of the fighting’s scale and intensity. Experts said the data should neither be dismissed outright nor treated as wholly reliable.

We rate the claim that the population in Gaza has increased by 2.02% since Oct. 7, 2023, False.