Genocide in Palestine: Gaza as a case study

This article contends that Israeli policies that were enacted after the introduction of the siege in Gaza amount to slow-motion genocide. The United Nations has repeatedly warned of the serious implications of the Israeli siege and asserted that Gaza could soon be uninhabitable [Miriam Berger, ‘The U.N. Once Predicted Gaza Would Be “Uninhabitable” by 2020. Two Million People Still Live There’, Washington Post, January 2, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/01/un-predicted-gaza-would-be-uninhabitable-by-heres-what-that-actually-means/]. The present study adopts a sociological perspective and argues that genocide should be understood as a social practice rather than physical annihilation or merely mass killing of a group of people. It also situates the siege within a larger settler-colonial framework and emphasises the processual nature of the Nakba. Drawing on data collected through semi-structured interviews with Palestinian students as well as human rights reports, and historical and sociological materials, this article elaborates on how Israel commits a slow-motion genocide against defenceless populations in the Gaza Strip.