Healthocide Engineering in Gaza Strip: An analysis of the Israeli Occupation’s Strategies and Impact on the Health System (2023-2025)

Abstract

The health systems have increasingly become targets of armed conflicts, raising growing concerns about the use of healthcare destruction as a tool of collective violence. In the context of the war on Gaza (2023–2025), extensive attacks on hospitals, medical personnel, healthcare infrastructure, and essential medical supplies have generated scholarly and legal debates regarding the emergence of what has recently been termed “healthocide” or “health genocide.” This study examines the concept of Healthocide Engineering in the Gaza Strip and analyzes the strategies employed by the Israeli occupation and their impact on the collapse of the healthcare system.

The research seeks to answer the following central question: To what extent can the systematic targeting of Gaza’s healthcare sector be conceptualized as a form of healthocide, and how can this phenomenon be interpreted within the frameworks of international law and contemporary political theory? To address this question, the study adopts a qualitative descriptive-analytical methodology based on the examination of reports issued by United Nations agencies, international organizations, human rights bodies, official health statistics, and relevant academic literature covering the period from October 2023 to 2025.

The findings indicate that the targeting of hospitals, medical personnel, healthcare infrastructure, medical supply chains, and health information systems constitutes a multidimensional pattern of destruction that extends beyond conventional military operations. The study demonstrates that siege, starvation, deprivation of medical care, and restrictions on humanitarian access have significantly contributed to the deterioration of health conditions and the functional collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system. The analysis further shows that these practices may be interpreted as mechanisms of structural violence that operate through the management of life, illness, and death, consistent with the theoretical perspectives of biopower and necropolitics.

The study concludes that Healthocide Engineering provides a useful analytical framework for understanding contemporary forms of violence directed against health systems in conflict settings. It recommends strengthening international accountability mechanisms, protecting healthcare infrastructure during armed conflicts, improving documentation of health-related violations, and advancing scholarly research on healthocide as an emerging interdisciplinary concept situated at the intersection of international law, political science, and health studies.