A Pattern of Genocide

Al-Haq, 23 Jan 2025

After 15 months of continuing genocide against the Palestinian people, Al-Haq releases a new report: “The Systematic Destruction of Gaza’s Healthcare System: A Pattern of Genocide”. The report details Israel’s campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people, by systematically destroying the healthcare system in Gaza and wilfully denying critically ill and injured Palestinians access to lifesaving medical care, acts carried out with an intent to destroy Palestinians in breach of the Genocide Convention.

Israel’s military assault on the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023 has devastated every sector of Palestinian society, entrenching the settler colonial apartheid regime and fragmentation of the Palestinian territory. The Israeli Occupying Forces’ (IOF) targeting of hospitals and health centers, the denial of adequate medical provisions into and around the Gaza Strip, and the abduction, torture, and killing of medical personnel is evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent to: (i) inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and (ii) impose measures intended to prevent Palestinian births in the Gaza Strip.

The concerted policy to destroy the healthcare system in Gaza is directly and causally linked to statements made by Israeli officials. From early on in the military assault against Gaza, the Israeli government and military placed a target on hospitals in Gaza, distorting principles of international law to justify genocidal violence against the Palestinian people. In October 2023, IOF spokesperson Daniel Hagari claimed at a news conference that “Hamas has turned hospitals into command and control centers and hideouts for Hamas terrorists and commanders.” In November 2023, The IOF published and deleted a post on social media platform X calling ambulances and hospitals “terrorist infrastructure” and “legitimate military targets.” Indeed, characterisations of the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip as “terrorist infrastructure” and employing the argument that militant groups were using hospitals and displaced people inside as “human shields” permeated Israeli society, with a group of 45 influential Jewish rabbis in Israel issuing a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stating that there is no religious or moral objection to bombing Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. The lack of accountability for statements and actions of the Israeli leadership and military personnel reinforced the increasing acceptance of violence against Palestinians and allowed the uninterrupted assault against Gaza’s healthcare system to become systematic and institutionalised.

Through a documented pattern of: (i) intentional deprivation of resources; (ii) intimidation; (iii) direct targeting; (iv) siege; and (v) invasion, the IOF systematically targeted Gaza’s hospitals to render them out of service, destroy their facilities, and prevent Palestinian access to critical medical care amidst intensifying Israeli airstrikes and destruction of civilian residences, schools, shelters, mosques, churches, and other protected areas under international humanitarian law.

Israel’s attacks on protected hospital zones and medical personnel leaves no safe place where the Palestinian people can survive in Gaza.  As Israel subjects the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, we urgently request States to immediately intervene to end the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and address the systematic targeting of medical personnel and hospitals, in territory held under military siege, where Israel continues to carry out massacres of the displaced in areas meant to heal the sick and wounded, ultimately causing the collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system and rendering no place safe for Palestinians to survive.

Read the full report

Al-Haq is an independent Palestinian non-governmental human rights organisation based in Ramallah, West Bank.