Disabling the State: Theorising State Violence and ‘Disablement’ as a Two-Pronged Strategy in Genocide

Conceptualising disability and disablement in the context of genocide

Historic and ongoing cases of genocide demonstrate how disability is intertwined with genocide and manifests in different configurations. Persons with disabilities may be intentionally targeted with the intent of destroying that group (such as in Nazi Germany; see Bro 2021, for example); or the corollary may be witnessed in which the general population is intentionally disabled (Issa 2025) with the knowledge that persons with disabilities are disproportionately or more quickly affected by such dire conditions (e.g. Blaser 2002; Human Rights Watch 2024). Both stem from ableist logic that casts persons with disabilities as ‘deficient’. In the former, the ideological underpinning is one of eliminating disability from ‘the national gene pool’, which, as happened in Nazi Germany, can be understood as an early indicator and ‘the first chapter’ of the genocide that was to follow (Friedlander 1995, xii). In the latter, the intention is the creation of disability as ‘deficiency’, based on the ableist assumption that it will act to subdue political engagement, resistance (see Jaffee 2016), and the ability to rebuild or recover. This paper focuses on the latter configuration, exploring how impairment, rather than being a case of so-called collateral damage, may be intentionally created as a genocidal strategy, and suggesting the occurrence of a parallel process of disabling the State.

Applying a similar analytic frame to Jaffee (2016), we use the term ‘disablement’ to describe the production of impairment and barriers as a political tactic by which disability is manufactured for political ends. This notion draws on, and extends, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) conceptualisation of disability as resulting ‘from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others’ (UNCRPD 2007, preamble). In taking this conceptualisation of disability as our starting point, whereby impairment is deliberately created and barriers are usefully exacerbated, we acknowledge two major critiques of the UNCRPD.

The first critique relates to the framing and conceptualisation of the UNCRPD; as lacking a geopolitical dimension and being silent on the structural inequalities, the creation of impairment, and the violence and control of imperialism, colonialism, and neoliberalism that are inextricably bound up in the experience of disability, particularly in the Global South and in occupied territories such as Palestine (e.g. Badran et al. 2024; Chouinard 2018; Jaffee 2016; Meekosha 2011; Puar 2017; Soldatic 2013). The second major critique of the UNCRPD relates to issues around implementation, enforcement, and localisation, which have been identified as particularly challenging in the Global South (Grech et al. 2023). Issues of implementation and enforcement are particularly salient in the context of Palestine, where the rights of persons with disabilities are foundationally and systematically violated (e.g. Badran et al. 2024). Although there is also evidence of gaps in the implementation of the UNCRPD for Israelis, the issues tend to be more severe for Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship² (see Badran et al. 2024; CSF for CRPD in Israel 2020), despite their higher rates of disability (CSF for CRPD in Israel 2020). While these criticisms are valid, it remains that International Human Rights Law and instruments including the UNCRPD constitute our best existing tools to systematically document State violations, and pursue accountability and enforcement. Acknowledging the UNCRPD as an essential but insufficient instrument, we apply it as a starting point in our conceptualisation of disablement, which we intentionally expand to include geopolitical aspects of the creation of impairments and barriers.

Disability, and therefore disablement, always occur within a sociopolitical context. From this perspective, the bodies and minds of the people under settler-colonialism become the site of political violence (Abay and Soldatić 2024; Grech & Soldatić 2015; Jaffee 2016; Pierce & Rao 2006; Puar 2017). The fact that hostilities also create environmental barriers, for example, through damage to infrastructure and community networks, further contributes to the experience of disability. Jaffee (2016, 123) eloquently argues that disablement is foundational to Israel’s settler-colonial project, in an ableist attempt ‘to subdue resistance, to eliminate a culture, and to erase a people’. Such framing aligns with the most extreme example of political violence, that of genocide.

When Lemkin (2014) coined the term ‘genocide’, he created a legal conceptual framing of a multi-dimensional phenomenon with biological, cultural, economic, and social aspects, not only mass murder. Lemkin positioned genocide as a process of erasure enacted through destruction of social institutions, exclusion from economic participation, prevention of biological continuity, and suppression of political, cultural, and religious engagement and expression. Thus, genocide went beyond large-scale killing to a process of systemic violence, including laws, policies, and institutions, to bring about the erasure of participation in collective life. Therefore, we argue that if genocide is the dismantling of all means of participation in collective life, and disability is a biological and (geo)political and social condition, then disablement at both the population and State levels functions practically as an explicit, two-pronged genocidal strategy.

This article applies the concept of disablement to two levels: the individual/human population, and the State, and explores how political violence and genocide disable through bottom-up and top-down processes. At the level of the human population living within a defined territory, disablement involves the parallel processes of producing impairment in the body structure/function and creating barriers that limit participation in everyday life. The intentional creation of impairment as a product of political violence and genocide reflects colonial strategies documented in different contexts (for example, the use of mutilation in the Rwandan genocide; Blaser 2002) and is contemporarily at play in the settler-colonial context of Palestine (Jaffee 2016), and in particular, Gaza (Issa 2025). At the population level, creating impairment through maiming and starving individuals at a mass scale is designed to incapacitate the population based on the ableist logic of subduing resistance and reducing the opportunities for rebuilding or recovery efforts following genocide. At the level of the State, political violence acts to impair the functions of the State (such as providing security) while also impeding participation at the international level, such as limiting opportunities for engagement in the UN. Under International Law, the State of Palestine is considered under occupation (ICJ 2024b; UNSC 2009; UNSC 2023; UNGA 2018; UNGA 2023). Occupation hinders the State from functioning independently, necessitating reliance on the colonial state, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), and aid to meet some of the basic functions of a State, such as providing education.

This paper is structured in four parts. In Section 1, we have outlined the conceptual parameters of the paper. Section 2 explores the bottom-up strategy of the creation of disability in the populations, through the manufacture of impairment and barriers to participation, with a particular focus on Gaza. Section 3 addresses the top-down strategy of disablement of State functioning, and mirrors Section 2, exploring first internal State disablement, and second, the creation of barriers to State participation on the international stage, focusing on the wider context of the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). For Sections 2 and 3, we draw on data comprising reports from academics, agencies, and journalists, all in the public domain, regarding attacks that have impaired or otherwise interfered with the functioning of the State.

Our core argument across Sections 2 and 3 is that disablement must be understood as an explicit goal of political violence, not as a secondary consequence. We suggest that where political violence and active genocide are ongoing, disablement – at the level of the population and at the level of the State – becomes a perpetual process. That core argument leads us, in Section 4, to suggest that accounting for disablement should be at the forefront of responses to humanitarian crises such as genocide. In particular, we argue that to address disability and disablement as a genocidal tactic at either population or State level, it is necessary to account for both levels, with inclusivity and accessibility specifically addressed.

Addressing disability at the population level alone will not be effective if State functions remain disabled. For example, providing comprehensive prosthetic and rehabilitative care to disabled individuals is not possible if the State cannot support access to higher-order needs such as food, education, or a peaceful context in which to access care. Similarly, addressing disablement at the political level without addressing disability at the population level will be incomplete. If, for example, a formerly disabled State is facilitated to engage internationally in trade agreements, we expect its capacity to administer the functions of a State, such as growing or importing foodstuffs, educating its populace, and providing security to increase, yet targeted attention to the inequalities in access to these services experienced by disabled persons will still be required.

Direct creation of impairment

Israel’s State-orchestrated violence against Palestinians creates impairment directly, through injuring individuals, as well as indirectly, by impeding access to critical resources including healthcare and food.

Israel’s systematic pattern of violent attacks against Palestinian people must be understood as a strategy of direct and intentional creation of impairment in the population (Issa 2025; Jaffee 2016; Puar 2017). Analysis suggests a pattern of ‘premeditatively produced mass injuries and impairments in the Israeli settler-colonial context’ during the Great March of Return (2018–2019) (Obermaier 2024). Testimony from medical experts suggests that it was not merely the nature of attacks (causing inevitable civilian harm), but also the choice of weapons, which points towards disablement as an intentional strategy of Israel:

‘What is different in the pattern of injuries during the Great Return Marches is that the accuracy of the weapon of choice does not leave any possibility that mutilation was somehow a byproduct (collateral damage) of the act of war’ (Abu Sittah, nd).

Data from current and previous periods of heightened Israeli attacks in the oPt suggest that significant numbers of the injuries inflicted will result in newly acquired, lifelong disability (Ferriman 2002; WHO 2024a). The pattern of injuries in the escalation of hostilities in Gaza since October 2023 indicates a disproportionately high number of women and children targeted (Alsalqawi and Villar 2024), and estimates indicate that one in four of those injured have sustained ‘life-altering injuries’ (WHO 2024b). With the number of injuries reaching 164,264 alongside an additional 18,117 injuries sustained by people seeking food assistance at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) food distribution points (as of September 12 2025; Health Cluster oPt and WHO oPt, 2025), the creation of impairment is unprecedented. Gaza now reports the highest number of child amputees per capita globally, alongside extremely high numbers of adults undergoing amputations (UN News 2024).

The sheer numbers of the types and volume of injuries in Gaza since October 2023, alongside evidence from prior violence enacted by Israel in Palestine which pointed to ‘carefully aimed hits’ to the head, legs, and eyes (Qato 2004, 351), suggests an intentional strategy of creating impairment alongside death, a conclusion that has been reached by several disability scholars (e.g. Jaffee 2016; Obermaier 2024). While amputations have received most media attention, Israel’s conduct has created a range of impairments. Sniper shots to the eyes are one of the leading causes of visual impairment in Palestine (Jaouni and O’Shea 1997). Suggestive of intentionality is the disproportionate number of photojournalists losing their sight from Israeli sniper attacks (Deprez 2023; Hajaj and Bailey 2019), likely targeted in this way because they rely on their sight for their work, including for documenting Israeli attacks. Gunshot wounds and shrapnel also risk spinal cord injuries and brain injuries (Aftab et al. 2025; Darwazeh et al. 2018; Mahase 2024). Data on injuries sustained by falling rubble is lacking, but likely to be another important cause of life-altering impairments.

To enact an intentional and effective strategy of disablement of a population, the aggressor must pair the manufacture of new impairments and exacerbation of existing impairments with the creation of barriers to participation. It is to the indirect manufacture of impairments and the creation of barriers that we now turn.

Indirect creation of impairment and creation of barriers to participation

Indirectly, State violence has enacted barriers to access to basic services and to participation as part of the bottom-up strategy to disable the population.

Internal state disablement

Scholars across the social sciences and humanities have broadly agreed on a minimum set of criteria for a State (Axtmann, 2004; Birch, 2002; Innis, 2018; Weber, 1994). Modern States are territorialised, have a monopoly on violence, and have a sufficient level of legitimacy (ibid). State capacity is defined ‘as the State’s power to achieve intended outcomes and ability to meet its citizens’ minimum expectations’ (Besley and Persson 2009; Besley and Persson 2010; Dincecco 2017; Lindvall and Teorell 2016). For States to function, they require legitimacy, but also the ability to carry out basic functions. Some States derive legitimacy from sources other than these functions, like religion or even violence. Complete State capture via apartheid, occupation, and genocide (Khalidi 2020) means that in Palestine, State functions are impaired to the point that it cannot meet these basic criteria.

Building from Weber’s conceptions of the modern State and theories of State capacity (Besley and Persson 2009; Besley and Persson 2010; Dincecco 2017; Lindvall and Teorell 2016; Weber 1994), we argue that Israel disables the Palestinian State from meeting the minimum criteria of a State. To illustrate this, the basic functions of a State that we examine are: it should have a monopoly on violence, to provide relative security, a means of issuing citizenship/data collection, and the ability to govern (Innis 2018; Lindvall and Teorell 2016). Sovereignty and independence are core to carrying out these functions, both of which have been denied to the Palestinian State and Palestinian people.

‘Divide and conquer’ strategies in Palestine have been used to disconnect Palestinians geographically and legally, and establish hierarchies based on convenience to the Israeli State. For example, the post-1967 borders disconnect the West Bank and Gaza (Pappé 2006; Pappé 2007), with Palestinians in Jerusalem left with precarious legal status. Meanwhile, in 1949, Israel granted citizenship rights to Palestinians in ‘48 Palestine, maintaining the illusion of democracy while erasing their Palestinian identity in documentation (Manna 2020; Manna 2022; Masalha 1991; Robinson 2020). In the West Bank, Israel imposes strict military rule on Palestinians, enforcing systemic segregation that routinely bars them from entering their own properties where illegal Israeli settlements are built in violation of international law (Gordon 2008a; Gordon 2008b; Shakir 2021; UNGA 2022). This practice undermines a core State function of guaranteeing property rights to its citizens in some capacity (Besley and Persson 2009).

This classic divide and conquer strategy also prevents the Palestinian state from guaranteeing physical security for its citizens, because it lacks effective territorial control and cannot exercise a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, consistently protect people and property, or reliably enforce the rule of law. Palestinians live under military rule and constant surveillance; Palestinian citizens of Israel also face extensive surveillance, unequal protection from violence, and systemic discrimination by state institutions (Gordon 2008b; Zureik et al. 2011; Zureik 2015). In a more equal and democratic society, security forces (e.g. police) protect all members of society, but this is often not the case in Israel, largely because a colonial state is inherently violent against the indigenous population (Césaire 2000; Fanon 1963; Mbembe 2003; Wolfe 2006). In 2021, targeted riots and pogroms erupted across different cities within Israel’s territory (Haifa, Lydd/Lod, Bayit VeGan/Bat Yam, and Akkah/Acre) where Palestinians were targeted on the streets, in their homes, and at their jobs/businesses (Guardian Staff Reporter 2021; Levy 2023). In the oPt, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has de jure power to some extent, but de facto power is given to the Israeli occupying forces (Amnesty International 2022; Zureik 2023). This is an example of how the PA cannot guarantee security within its territory (OCHA 2025). Since the 2007 blockade of Gaza, the PA is completely disconnected from governing or providing protection over its second largest contiguous territory, and Palestinians in Gaza routinely experience electricity and fuel shortages, border closures, the threat of bombings, and food shortages (Pappé 2017; UNHCR 2009). This strategy has intensified in the last three years as part of Israel’s goal to control and annex the region (Kingsley and Boxermann 2025).

The deliberate fragmentation of the oPt has a direct impact on the Palestinian State’s ability to carry out its basic economic functions. States can derive legitimacy from their ability to provide access to public goods and services, such as infrastructure, clean water, and healthcare services (Lindvall and Teorell 2016). The lack of full economic independence of Palestine affects access to public goods and services. Since the Nakba, Israel has and continues to systematically destroy Palestinian infrastructure, a situation which is escalating in Gaza and across the oPt. For example, economic barriers create compounding problems across Palestine because the oPt cannot control trade within its territory due to Israel’s violations of international law and territorial annexation between the oPt and Gaza (Shakir 2021). A single contiguous territory is important for trade, power projection, and an overall cohesive State (Axtmann 2004; Tilly 1992). However, Israel has disabled the Palestinian State through its prolonged form of settler colonialism, which continues with relative impunity despite international law. Meanwhile, the oPt is forced to conduct economic activity through the occupying force. For example, Israel charges the PA to buy water and clean sewage in the oPt (Amnesty International 2009; OCHA 2025). Israel also charges Palestinians to demolish their own homes and does not compensate Palestinians when illegal settlements are built (Amnesty International 2022; B’Tselem 2025; Shakir, 2021). This revenue typically boosts State capacity, but instead the Palestinian State is reduced to functioning via NGO funding (Roy 1995). NGOs are among the largest employers in the West Bank, and without their presence, the oPt would experience a further economic crisis (Roy 1995; World Bank 2024). However, long-term dependence on NGO employment is not a sustainable development model (World Bank 2024). It also serves a dual purpose to the colonising State by enabling economic extraction from the indigenous population while simultaneously weakening Palestinian institutional capacity to deliver core public functions, undermining State legitimacy.

Palestinian state institutions are structurally constrained in their ability to guarantee core civil and political liberties, protections that may not be a formal prerequisite for statehood but are a key source of political legitimacy (Besley and Persson 2009; Dincecco 2017; Lindvall and Teorell 2016). In the Palestinian case, this legitimacy is undermined by internal governance weakness alongside an externally imposed regime of control that limits large-scale transfer and reclassification of Palestinian land into predominantly Jewish ownership, embedding dispossession within a durable legal and land regime (Khalidi 2020; Pappé 2007; Robinson 2020; Zureik 2015). In the oPt, the PA’s bureaucratic authority is curtailed by Israel’s continued control over the population registry and legal status of residents. This constrains a State’s routine functions such as issuing passports and administering civil rights (Gordon 2008a; Zureik, Lyon and Abu-Laban 2011). Although the Oslo Accords (1993) created limited pockets of Palestinian self-governance, Israel’s architecture of road closures, control over movement, and territorial access has repeatedly restricted social and political life as well as governance capacity (Gordon 2008b; Pappé 2017).

Israel’s method of colonising Palestine is marked by territorial fragmentation and systematic disabling of Palestinian governmental capacity through security, administrative, and technological regimes of control. The Oslo Accords produced a limited form of Palestinian self-rule, but one that was designed to ‘outsource’ day-to-day responsibility for the occupied population while Israel retained decisive control over borders, movement, security coordination, and the infrastructural conditions of governance (Gordon 2008b; Khalidi 2020; Lindvall and Teorell 2016). Thus, the subaltern state’s ability to guarantee the basic functions of the state, namely physical security, is undermined by the colonial state. This weakens the institutions that would ordinarily provide protection, general order, and welfare, keeping the PA in a permanent crisis of capacity and legitimacy (Gordon 2008a; Gordon 2008b).

This disabling logic stands in stark contrast to the sociopolitical reality within Israel, where the military/security state has historically invested heavily in disability response for its own citizens, especially disabled veterans, treating rehabilitation as a core state obligation and pillar of the welfare settlement (Gal and Bar 2000). Israeli militarism and disability governance are mutually reinforcing because the military not only produces disability through war and service, but it integrates disability into national projects of identity/belonging, institutional expansion, and innovation. Likewise, its military-industrial complex has been a major engine of economic growth. The existence of this contrasting response to disability by the colonising State demonstrates that it is aware of the risk to both State and population of disablement, as it goes to great lengths to address it. The combined result is stark asymmetry where the colonising state consolidates legitimacy and economic growth through robust, well-resourced disability and rehabilitation infrastructures for its own population, while the indigenous/subaltern state is deprived of the very capacities through which it could protect citizens and sustain political legitimacy (Gordon 2008b; Kretzmer 2012).

Creating barriers to meaningful participation on the international stage

International recognition matters because it enables states to engage in diplomacy, trade, and treaty-making, tools by which a State can secure resources, protect its citizens, and carry out its basic domestic functions. When recognition is blocked or downgraded, tangible costs include limited access to international institutions, weakened bargaining power, a narrowing of lawful avenues for accountability, and a population more dependent on humanitarian substitution for rights-based political membership (Imseis 2023). Just as equal recognition before the law is foundational for non-discrimination and participation of persons with disabilities (Quinn 2020), so is equal recognition of State on the international legal stage. Without recognition, a state’s capacity to enter into international relationships is constrained by institutional gatekeeping and the ability of powerful states to block membership or enforcement outcomes (Imseis 2023).

UNRWA was established in 1949 (UNGA Res.302(IV)) to provide relief and work to Palestinian refugees, an essential intervention, but also a substitute for political remedies where membership was denied (Imseis 2023; see Khalidi 2020 for the history of Palestine necessitating the creation of UNRWA). Over time, this humanitarianisation of the Palestinian condition has interacted with ongoing colonisation and occupation. When political equality is blocked, humanitarian governance expands, but it cannot replace sovereign capacity to secure borders, regulate commerce, or protect rights in a durable way. Even when Palestine’s status advanced, it did so in a constrained form. In 2012, the UNGA upgraded Palestine to ‘non-member observer State’ (UNGA Res. 67/19), opening access to treaty regimes and legal forums without equal standing (Imseis 2023).

These barriers and minor advancements tangibly shape whether Palestine can operate like other states in arenas that can determine wellbeing (e.g. trade, mobility, finance, and legal protection). The pattern is consistent with the broader argument; international recognition is not simply symbolic legitimacy. Recognition is a mechanism of state capacity, and when restricted, it reinforces dependency and narrows the lawful tools available to a subaltern state to protect its population and contest ongoing dispossession and colonisation (Imseis 2023).