How disability can become a death sentence in Gaza today
Professor Penny Green has co-authored an article with Grace Spence Green for the Middle East Eye highlighting the ever-worsening disability crisis in Gaza.
In the article they explain that, since 7 October 2023, the war in Gaza has left thousands of Palestinians with life-changing injuries at the hands of Israeli occupying forces. This includes limb amputations, spinal injuries, life changing burns and brain injuries.
Alongside this is the growing evidence of the psychological and mental trauma suffered by the Palestinian population in Gaza. The Gaza Community Mental Health Programme anticipating that “every child will need mental health support” if the war continues.
The article goes on to outline the decades of systematic and targeted attacks on Gaza’s health and rehabilitative structures, and blockades to medical supplies and medicines, leave the newly inured, chronically ill and the disabled in a state on injury.
Professor Penny Green and Grace Spence Green say: “Any assertion of Palestinian resilience and recovery represents an existential threat to Israel’s identity. By disabling the capacity of Gaza to heal and rehabilitate the injured, to feed the starving, to educate the young, to house the dispossessed, Israel attempts to weaken resilience and the possibility of resistance.”
Read the full article on the Middle East Eye.
More information:
- Penny Green is Professor of Law and Globalisation and Co-Director of the International State Crime Initiative at Queen Mary University of London.