Gaza's Erased Futures
Reports detail a demographic disaster in Gaza, citing a surge in miscarriages, stillbirths, and severe birth defects amidst the ongoing assault. With hospitals targeted and healthcare infrastructure obliterated, access to prenatal care, safe delivery, and essential nutrition has vanished, particularly for an estimated 150,000 pregnant women. The destruction forces women to give birth in tents or
amidst rubble, often requiring medical intervention they cannot receive, leading to a generation born into unprecedented precarity. What these reports habitually glaze over is that this crisis is not a sudden accident of warfare, but the predictable outcome of a policy dating back at least to 2007. That year, Dov Weisglass, an advisor to then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, explicitly stated the aim
for Gaza: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” This 'diet' included calculating the precise caloric intake to keep Gaza's population at subsistence levels, a tactic revealed in a 2012 UN report documenting Israeli restrictions on food, water, and medical supplies. When mainstream outlets frame the collapse of Gaza's healthcare as simply a consequence
of current hostilities, they ignore over 17 years of deliberate economic siege. They highlight the rising rates of infant mortality and birth complications without acknowledging the systematic starvation and medical apartheid that predated and enabled the current devastation. This omission transforms a calculated policy of dehumanization into an unfortunate wartime side effect, absolving