Gaza’s healthcare system is facing total collapse amid the ongoing genocide launched by the Israeli occupation since 7 October 2023, under a suffocating siege and relentless airstrikes that have targeted civilians, infrastructure, and even medical facilities.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza has warned that hospitals are now incapable of delivering even the most basic care due to a severe shortage of medical equipment and supplies. Critical units such as surgery, intensive care, and emergency departments are operating with expired and depleted tools, while essential medicines are entirely unavailable.
Vital equipment like mobile X-ray machines and anaesthesia systems are no longer functional, effectively halting urgent surgical interventions amid rising daily casualties. Specialised surgeries—including orthopaedics, vascular procedures, ophthalmology, and general surgery—have been suspended due to the lack of instruments, increasing the severity of untreated injuries.
Hospital wards are suffering from an acute shortage of beds and essential supplies. Stocks of medical gases, including oxygen and carbon dioxide, have completely run out. Infection control measures have also collapsed due to the absence of hygiene and sterilisation materials, while medical teams operate without basic logistical or nutritional support.
This systemic collapse reflects one dimension of the ongoing genocide: a strategy that goes beyond direct killing to dismantling all means of survival. The occupation has systematically blocked the entry of medical supplies, targeted health centres, and prevented the evacuation of the wounded—an execution by attrition.
According to the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the deliberate imposition of conditions intended to destroy a national or ethnic group, in whole or in part, constitutes genocide. What is happening in Gaza meets this definition in full.
Since the beginning of the war, more than 172,000 people have been killed or injured, the vast majority of them women and children. Over 11,000 remain missing, while more than 1.5 million people are displaced. Essential sectors such as healthcare, education, and public services are being wiped out in a scorched-earth campaign.
What is unfolding in Gaza’s hospitals, in operating rooms, and beneath the rubble is a new chapter in a well-documented crime of genocide—one unfolding in full view, with the silence of the international community turning it into an act of complicity.
