Netanyahu’s claims before the US Congress: Facts or falsehoods?

PM defends Israel’s war on Gaza, suggesting Israel has minimised civilian losses. What do the facts say?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has addressed a joint session of the United States Congress as his country conducts a war on Gaza in which more than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed.

Netanyahu on Wednesday presented a defence of Israel’s war, launched on October 7, the day Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups carried out attacks on Israeli territory in which 1,139 people were killed.

The prime minister spoke of a plan for what he termed a “de-radicalised post-war Gaza” but offered few details beyond the assertion that Israel would retain security control over the strip. Outside Congress, meanwhile, protesters called for him to be prosecuted for alleged war crimes as families of some Israeli captives held in Gaza were evicted from the building for demanding answers from the Israeli premier.

So what were the key claims Netanyahu made in his speech, and how true were they? Al Jazeera fact-checks the prime minister’s address:

Netanyahu: “Remember what so many people said? If Israel goes into Rafah, there’ll be thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of civilians killed. Well, last week, I went into Rafah. I visited our troops as they finished fighting Hamas’s remaining terrorist battalions. I asked the commander there, “How many terrorists did you take out in Rafah?” He gave me an exact number: 1,203. I asked him, “How many civilians were killed?” He said, “Prime minister, practically none. With the exception of a single incident, where shrapnel from a bomb hit a Hamas weapons depot and unintentionally killed two dozen people, the answer is practically none.”