On Humanity and Disability in the Gaza Genocide
Anat Greenstein
This article has two goals. The first is to describe the unique experiences of people with disabilities in the Gaza Strip. These experiences are often marginalized due to the dehumanization of Gazans and the disregard for their lives and deaths in mainstream media, as well as the marginality of people with disabilities in general discourse. The second goal is to situate the lives of people with disabilities in Gaza within a broader human story—one that does not attempt to conceal the vulnerability and interdependence at the heart of human existence. Disability is not a unique phenomenon, entirely separate from “normal life” or located exclusively in the bodies of “the disabled.” We are all at risk of becoming disabled. In fact, the vast majority of those living with disabilities were not born that way but became disabled over the course of their lives due to illness, accidents, environmental conditions, or wars. These conditions are not equally distributed; they disproportionately affect people living in poverty, migrants, and racialized populations. Approximately 80% of people with disabilities live in countries of the Global South. Moreover, much of the difficulty, loneliness, and pain in the lives of people with disabilities derive from their physical and social environment—that is, from physical, political, and social structures that disregard their needs—and not solely from their physiological impairments. Consequently, liberation struggles must resist the mechanisms of injury that produce disability, alongside building an inclusive society that removes barriers to social participation and recognizes lives with disabilities as valuable and meaningful.
Even before October 7, 2023, the lives of Palestinians with disabilities were deeply affected by apartheid policies and the Israeli siege of Gaza. From the “breaking bones” policy of the First Intifada to the deliberate shooting at the knees of participants in the Great March of Return in 2018–2019, Israel has effectively created disability through direct military violence. As Jasbir Puar explains in her book The Right to Maim, maiming is often not a random outcome of violence, but a deliberate policy aimed at limiting and weakening the capacities for action by an oppressed society. Such policies follow two parallel tracks, operating simultaneously through inflicting direct bodily harm and through the erosion of care and support systems that enable rehabilitation, recovery, and the creation of accessible physical and social environments.
Accordingly, years of cuts to electricity supplies in Gaza and parts of the West Bank have made life extremely difficult for people with disabilities who rely on elevators, require ventilators, or use motorized wheelchairs and scooters to leave their homes and participate in education, the labor market, or social activities. Under the blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip in 2007, and under the pretext of “dual use” (military and civilian), the importation of spare parts and batteries for hearing aids and wheelchairs was prohibited, as was the importation of carbon fiber used to stabilize residual limbs and build prostheses. Restrictions on the importation of advanced medical equipment, along with limitations on the ability of doctors and healthcare professionals to travel for further training and specialization, have weakened the healthcare system. It became necessary to travel to the West Bank or abroad to receive treatment in complex medical cases. This situation increased both the financial and the caregiving burden for people with disabilities and their families. Furthermore, it expanded their dependence on the Israeli travel permit system and their exposure to Shin Bet interrogations, which often amount to extortion and threats.
Nevertheless, despite the siege, apartheid, and Israel’s policy of maiming, people with disabilities succeeded in creating substantial support systems. These systems relied on family- and community-based mutual aid networks, as well as international aid organizations that provided treatment, rehabilitation, and educational programs. They operated alongside civil society organizations fighting for justice and equality for people with disabilities. These organizations assert that disability is a political issue related to human rights, not merely the domain of charity and humanitarian aid, and demand that the international community recognize the close connection between the Israeli occupation and the proliferation of disability in Palestine. One notable example is the Gaza Sunbirds, a group of cyclists who lost a leg participating in the Great March of Return and trained for the Paralympic Games in Paris. At the start of the genocide, members of the group mobilized to collect donations from their international followers. They used their bicycles to distribute food and medicine to people who were unable to travel due to damaged roads.
Both channels of attack used by Israel against the Gaza Strip—direct violence and the erosion of systems enabling rehabilitation and participation—have intensified tenfold in the past two years. From the first day of the war of genocide, heavy bombardments, frequent displacements, and the worsening humanitarian situation disrupted the lives of all Gazans. Still, the impact on people with disabilities has been particularly deadly. First, many cannot escape quickly from bombed or burning buildings. People with hearing impairments who are trapped in rubble often struggle to communicate with rescuers or hear their calls. Second, evacuation to areas designated by Israel as “safe” is extremely complicated for people with disabilities and their families, especially as these displacements were frequent. These displacements force people to walk long distances on roads that have been destroyed, amid severe shortages of fuel and vehicles. Most shelters and evacuation camps are not accessible to people with disabilities. Overcrowding and noise are especially difficult for people with autism and can aggravate their condition. Limited and inaccessible toilets force even those who were previously independent to require constant assistance with intimate care.
A UN report from last August stated that 83% of people with disabilities in Gaza had lost essential assistive equipment with no possibility of replacement — oxygen tanks, pressure-relieving mattresses, wheelchairs, crutches, and even glasses and hearing aids. This figure does not include shortages affecting those who became disabled during the war. The loss of equipment further impedes mobility and functioning, increases dependence on families, and intensifies the general experience of anxiety, depression, and loss of confidence and self-efficacy. Repeated displacements have led to a near-total breakdown of the community support networks on which people with disabilities and their families relied in daily life. People with disabilities are also at greater risk of being separated from their families during flight and relocation and of having to rely on strangers for assistance—a situation that increases the risk of abuse, exploitation, and sexual violence.
The massive bombings have caused tens of thousands of injuries that resulted in permanent disabilities. According to a report by the World Health Organization, by the end of September 2025, more than 40,000 people, including over 10,000 children, had been disabled in Gaza during the war. The violence inevitably resulted in widespread psychological trauma, alongside serious injuries such as loss of vision and hearing, neurological damage, and thousands of limb amputations. Hunger and severe shortages of antibiotics, sterile supplies, and hospital beds have made even basic wound care impossible. Injuries that could have been successfully treated before the genocidal war instead become infected and complicated, frequently requiring amputation. For children under the age of 12, rehabilitation following amputation often involves multiple surgeries throughout adolescence to adjust the residual limb to their growing bodies.
The destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure—such as electricity, water, food, healthcare, and rehabilitation—harms the entire population. Still, for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, who need continuous and ongoing care, the impact is immediate and especially severe. Shortages of common medications for chronic conditions increase the risk of serious complications. Untreated, conditions such as diabetes and hypertension can lead to blindness, limb amputation, heart attacks, and strokes, thus turning an illness into a disability. Shortages of sedatives and psychiatric medications, combined with the extreme conditions of war and siege, trigger mental health crises and emotional breakdowns. These crises profoundly affect both individuals and their families while reinforcing stigma toward people with mental or cognitive disabilities.
Starvation and the reduction in the variety of available foods have significantly impacted life in the Gaza Strip. Malnutrition weakens the immune system, making the body more susceptible to disease. It also slows and complicates the wound-healing process. Even before the complete blockade on aid enacted on March 2, 2025, food distribution points were crowded, inaccessible, and therefore difficult to reach for people with disabilities. With the transition to four GHF distribution points, access to food became nearly impossible for people with disabilities. The distribution centers are remote, and those seeking aid must evade ongoing gunfire by Israeli soldiers and private American security companies. Starvation affects children first and has long-term consequences for their health and development that extend across generations. The first to die of hunger are children with cerebral palsy and chronic conditions such as cystic fibrosis, who depend on pureed foods made from protein-rich ingredients like meat, eggs, and fresh fruit—foods that were almost entirely absent from the Gaza Strip until the ceasefire of October 2025.
At the height of the siege on the Gaza Strip, between March and May 2025, and in the months that followed, the fact that some of the first to die of hunger were children with disabilities was used by Israeli media and propaganda as evidence that hunger-related deaths in Gaza did not result from Israeli policy but were the inevitable outcome of biological processes. This occurred even though in Israel and across the Western world, children with similar medical conditions routinely reach adulthood and often live full lives. Here, the dehumanization of people with disabilities converges with the dehumanization of Palestinians in the service of an annihilationist logic. In this discourse, the lives of people with disabilities are portrayed as a kind of statistical error – fragile, precarious, and destined to collapse at any moment. At the same time, death is framed as the natural and expected outcome for children with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Of course, anyone – disabled or not – could die at any moment, and all lives depend on adequate material conditions for survival. Yet this discourse frames life with disability as categorically different—as not quite counting as real life. This distinction serves two purposes. First, it absolves Israel of moral responsibility for the killing of children by portraying their deaths as the natural consequence of disability, while simultaneously “exposing” Palestinians’ “deceptive manipulations.” Second, it denies our shared human vulnerability to illness, disability, and death, and obscures our mutual dependence on supportive environments that meet our needs. To confront dehumanization and the logic of annihilation, we need social structures and political imagination that recognize the value of disabled lives— in Gaza and everywhere – as integral to our shared, precarious, and ever-changing fabric of humanity.
Dr. Anat Greenstein is an academic coordinator at the Center for Disability Studies at the Hebrew University, a feminist activist, and a woman with a disability.