Genocide as Warfare & the Destruction of Gaza’s Healthcare Infrastructure

Abstract

This case study examines the relationship between genocide by attrition and modern warfare through the lens of Gaza’s health infrastructure. Drawing on Martin Shaw’s framework of genocide as a form of war and Geoff Bowker’s concept of infrastructural inversion, the thesis analyzes how healthcare infrastructure can become strategic targets and instruments of structural violence. The study is structured in three parts: (1) the policies and practices of the Oslo Process (1990s–2000s), which imposed restrictions on movement and medical supplies; (2) the material constraints produced by the Blockade and Iron Wall (2007–2014); and (3) the direct targeting of healthcare infrastructure (2014–2024), during which hospitals were transformed into overcrowded shelters, mass graves, and traps for displaced civilians. By focusing on health infrastructure as the unit of analysis, the thesis illustrates how systems of care become sites of attritional violence. Using public health data, human rights reports, news media, and historical documentation, the study demonstrates how artificially imposed constraints contribute to indirect mortality and the long-term degradation of collective survival. This research challenges the conventional focus on immediate mass death within genocide studies. It argues that material conditions may act as a driving force of the genocide processes.