A new article titled “Medical Lawfare: The Nakba and Israel’s Attacks on Palestinian Healthcare,” authored by Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon, has been published in the Journal of Palestine Studies. This article sheds light on Israel’s systematic attacks on healthcare facilities in the Gaza Strip during its military assaults between 2008 and 2023.
The authors introduce the concept of “medical lawfare” to describe Israel’s utilization of the laws of armed conflict to justify its targeting of healthcare infrastructure. By framing healthcare facilities as potential sources of threat, Israel employs legal mechanisms concerning human shields and “hospital shields” to legitimize the destruction of essential medical infrastructure in Gaza.
The article delves into how medical lawfare operates within a framework of racialized necropolitical governance, intensifying the settler-colonial logic of the Nakba. Through this lens, Palestinians are portrayed as culpable for their own plight, thereby justifying the destruction of crucial healthcare facilities as a means of securitizing life-saving resources.
Perugini and Gordon’s work exposes the insidious ways in which Israel’s military actions perpetuate the ongoing Nakba, systematically undermining Palestinian healthcare and perpetuating a cycle of violence and suffering in the region.
This critical research contributes significantly to the understanding of Israel’s military tactics and their devastating impact on Palestinian communities, particularly in the realm of healthcare. It calls for heightened awareness and advocacy to address these egregious violations of human rights and international law.
For further details and the full article, click here
