Over the course of two full years since 7 October 2023, the Israeli occupation has continued its war on the Gaza Strip, bringing about a deliberate and total collapse of the foundations of human existence in a crime of genocide being committed relentlessly amid international silence.
According to the latest data from the Gaza Ministry of Health, after 730 days of war, the death toll and number of wounded have reached 67,173 killed and 169,780 injured, including 20,179 children, 10,427 women, and 4,813 elderly people, while the number of victims still under the rubble or lying in the streets is estimated at 9,500.
The number of medical personnel killed stands at 1,701, while the occupation has detained 362 health sector workers under what has been described as conditions of “enforced disappearance”.
Systematic Destruction of the Health Sector
In a statement, the Ministry of Health described what is happening as a form of “health genocide” resulting from the deliberate and systematic targeting of health infrastructure. Out of 38 hospitals, 25 have been rendered completely out of service, while the remaining 13 operate only partially and under catastrophic conditions.
The occupation has also destroyed 103 out of 157 primary healthcare centres, while shortages have reached 55% in medicines, 66% in medical supplies, and 68% in laboratory equipment.
Hospital bed occupancy reached 225% by the end of September, compared to 82% before the war. Furthermore, 25 oxygen generation plants and 61 electricity generators have been destroyed, turning hospitals into “concrete shells” with no capacity to provide care or save the wounded.
Starvation as a Weapon of War
Alongside bombardment and siege, the occupation continues to use starvation as a weapon of war, in a blatant violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.
According to United Nations classifications, the Gaza Governorate has entered the fifth and final stage of food insecurity, that is a full-scale famine. More than 1.07 million people are facing stage four, defined as “acute food insecurity”.
The Ministry of Health has recorded 460 deaths due to starvation and malnutrition, including 154 children, while over 51,000 children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition.
Israeli authorities continue to prevent the regular entry of humanitarian aid, despite thousands of lorries waiting at border crossings, further exacerbating the humanitarian catastrophe.
Widespread Forced Displacement
The ongoing war of extermination has forcibly displaced more than 1.9 million Palestinians, around 85% of Gaza’s population, according to UNRWA, in flagrant violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the forcible transfer of protected populations under occupation.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 88% of the Gaza Strip is under Israeli evacuation orders, while hundreds of thousands are living in the open without shelter or clean water, amid the total collapse of humanitarian services.
The Destruction of Education and Civil Infrastructure
The Ministry of Education has confirmed that the occupation has completely destroyed 179 government schools and over 100 UNRWA schools, in addition to 63 university buildings.
Israeli attacks have killed 18,069 students and injured over 26,000 others, in what the United Nations describes as an “educational genocide” targeting Gaza’s generations and its future.
Genocide
All available evidence aligns with the definition contained in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which stipulates that genocide includes any act committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, including mass killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting living conditions intended to bring about physical destruction, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children.
In the Palestinian case, all these elements are present, from the declared intent of Israeli leaders to annihilate or permanently displace Gaza’s population, to the large-scale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, the deliberate destruction of civil, health, and educational infrastructure, the use of starvation and blockade as tools of slow death, and the mass forced displacement aimed at uprooting the indigenous population.
The International Court of Justice had already indicated, in its provisional measures issued in January and July 2024, that there exists a “serious and plausible risk of genocide in Gaza”, obliging Israel to take immediate measures to prevent it. Yet the assault has continued at an escalating pace, unchecked.
Global Silence and Complicity
Two years into the systematic massacres in the Gaza Strip, the international community stands in unprecedented silence and complicity before one of the most horrific crimes in modern history. The very international institutions established to safeguard peace, security, and human rights are content with issuing statements of “deep concern” and “calls for restraint”, while mass killings, total destruction, blockade, and starvation continue, in blatant violation of all international treaties, foremost among them the 1948 Genocide Convention and the Four Geneva Conventions.
Gaza has become an open stage for an ongoing crime, while the world watches without acting to stop the bloodshed or save what remains of its people. Such silence can only be understood as political and moral complicity that undermines the credibility of the international system and entrenches double standards in the application of international humanitarian law.
When the lives of tens of thousands of civilians are violated, hospitals and schools destroyed, and starvation used as a weapon of war without accountability, it means that international justice has become selective activated only where it aligns with the interests of major powers.
This continued global inaction not only legitimises genocide but also encourages its repetition, rendering international law institutions as powerless witnesses to a crime they were created to prevent.
