Structural Genocide as an Institutionalized Practice in Settler Colonialism: The Case of the 2023 Gaza War

Abstract

This study examines the concept of structural genocide as one of the structural practices adopted by settler-colonial regimes in their quest to dismantle indigenous groups and destroy the elements of their physical and moral existence. Genocide here is not limited to direct mass murder, but is embodied in organized policies that target the political, economic, educational and cultural infrastructures and institutions of the society under control, thereby weakening its ability to continue as an independent entity and transforming it into a marginal group of the colonial center.

In the Palestinian context, especially in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank after October 7, 2023, structural genocide is manifested in its clearest form, as it intertwined with genocide in a war that continues to this day, and in which modern tools were used, including artificial intelligence, the destruction of infrastructure, and the militarization of humanitarian aid as part of a systematic project to re-engineer Palestinian society spatially and demographically.

Facts on the ground and political analyses reveal that what happened in Gaza was not a conventional war but rather an organized structural extermination, using killing, starvation, and forced displacement as tools to dismantle society and turn it into a group incapable of reproducing itself. It was also embodied in the West Bank through dismemberment, the destruction of camps, and the political and economic undermining of the Palestinian Authority. In this way, the Zionist project is reproduced in its most modern form, based on the denial of the Palestinian existence rather than merely controlling it