Letter: Creating conditions for the impossibility of life

The United Nations Genocide Convention includes "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part" among the acts that can constitute genocide.

South Africa made this specific prohibition central to its case against Israel before the International Court of Justice. While a final ruling on the merits may take years, the ICJ has already ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent acts forbidden under the Convention.

Physicians for Human Rights Israel issued a July 2025 report titled Destruction of Conditions of Life: A Health Analysis of the Gaza Genocide. It concludes:

"Though Israel has cited military necessity...the scale, pattern, and nature of the operations, as well as accompanying statements, indicate a broader policy aimed at destroying Palestinian society in Gaza and making the enclave uninhabitable."

The report argues that the targeted destruction of hospitals, the obstruction of medical aid, and the killing and detention of over 1,800 health-care workers reveal a "deliberate and systematic dismantling of Gaza's health and life-sustaining systems."

Israeli architect Eyal Weizman makes a related argument in his 2026 book, Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide. Weizman documents how Israel's demolition of Gaza has made the territory unrecognizable and unlivable.

He explains in detail how buildings, "agriculture, wells and the soil itself has been destroyed and made toxic by bombs, artillery, tank shells and sappers [combat engineers]." An Israeli bulldozer operator in Gaza says that if Palestinians return to where their homes stood, "All they will find is sand."

According to Weizman, "Ungrounding...aims to remove a society from its place and erase all traces to its previous existence."

When hospitals, homes, water systems, farmland, and even the soil are systematically destroyed, this is not collateral damage. It is the deliberate creation of conditions for the impossibility of life and must be confronted for what it is: genocide.

Terry Hansen