Note: When we refer to ‘disabled people’ in this article, we mean the full spectrum of disability including physically disabled people, people with long-term conditions, people with lived experience of mental ill health, distress and trauma, people with learning difficulties and disabilities, and more. We use the term ‘disabled people’ as this is the more accepted term in the UK rather than ‘people with disabilities’.

As the world finally begins to speak out about the genocide in Palestine, UK organisations led by disabled people remain largely quiet. We understand that this stance can be explained away with many reasonable justifications, given the context in which Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations (DDPOs) currently work: typically UK-based, DDPOs are geographically organised and focus on local issues. Importantly, we, as disabled people, are also in the middle of an assault on our own right to life that has taken up a lot of finite energy.

However, it is important to recognise that some of these same organisations did speak out about the situation in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the genocide in Palestine has been named a mass-disabling event, and has been one of the single-most significant breaches of the UNCRPD in living history. The Israeli army has been using deliberate disablement as a weapon of war and while their tactical decimation of Gaza’s healthcare system, withholding of medical aid and vital food supplies has a lethal impact on everyone in Gaza, the consequences on disabled people are exponential.

Where’s the solidarity with Palestine from Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations

We are two people of colour who have been actively involved in the disabled people’s movement for a long time; we have worked in, and with DDPOs for over fifteen years respectively, one us is Palestinian, and both of us are Disabled.

To us, it is especially disappointing to see that organisations who claim to uphold the principles of ‘Disability Justice’ have not only failed to recognise the importance of Palestine to their members, but have also failed to work to publicly recognise the disproportionate impact of the ongoing genocide on disabled Palestinians, as is happening in other sectors.

As disabled people whose government is one of the most complicit in this genocide, it is incumbent upon us to step up our organising. As user-led organisations, it is time to start living the ten principles of Disability Justice: intersectionality, collective liberation, anti-capitalist politics, and cross-movement solidarity, to name just four.

Even more importantly, it is time for our representative organisations to start doing the work that they have largely avoided – drawing explicit links between the genocide and apartheid in Palestine, and the roll-back of disabled people’s rights in the UK. We start a lot of that work in this article.

The reality in Palestine

In just six months between October 2023 and April 2024, the Israeli army dropped 70,000 tonnes of explosives on Gaza, which surpasses the number of bombs dropped on Dresden, Hamburg, and London throughout the entirety of WWII combined, although Gaza is a fraction of the size of London alone. The bombardment has hardly let up since, and to date 60,000 Palestinians have been reported killed, based on deaths recorded at hospitals only and not counting bodies beneath the rubble.

Studies looking at the true number of Palestinians killed such as this Lancet model estimates death count to be at 186,000. A study published via Harvard Dataverse, as well as a separate calculation, predict that the number of dead Palestinians could be more than 400,000. This is in addition to the many thousands that have been wounded, and nearly all 2.1 million people in Gaza being displaced. In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians experience apartheid, displacement, and increasingly, murders by Israeli settlers and the Israeli army, many of whom, even when caught on video, are released. Since October 2023, over 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed, 200 of them children.

The famine is no accident

It also feels important to say that Gazans are not experiencing an accidental famine; they are being forcibly starved by Israel. The BBC reported that there are 6,000 trucks of aid waiting to enter Gaza – each carrying an estimated 20 tonnes of life-saving aid.

There is not one part of Gazan society that hasn’t suffered – read more from OCHA here.

Since as early as November 2023, it has felt clear to us that the Israeli army has been committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and given the mounting evidence, this seems to be the only reasonable conclusion to draw. Genocide scholars and international law experts agree with this conclusion.

Impact on disabled Palestinians

For many of us born or raised in the West, living through a war or conflict feels incomprehensible, especially if we are disabled. While many of us face barriers in our everyday lives to access the same rights as our non-disabled counterparts, these conditions are especially exacerbated in times of war and conflict.

Disabled people are usually the first to be harmed and often suffer more complex consequences in these times. The situation in Gaza is so catastrophic that it feels perverse to talk about gradations of inequality; and yet we must try and find a way to name the disabled experience.

OHCHR reports that disabled Palestinians are at a higher risk of dying, becoming injured, or acquiring further impairments. International law protects disabled people in armed conflict, but there have been myriad reports and evidence presented by UN agencies and human rights-based organisations which evidence the innumerable ways in which the Israeli government and Israeli armed forces have repeatedly failed to meet their obligations to disabled people under international law.

Israel demolishes everything disabled people need to live

In Gaza, if you can’t hear the bombers overhead, or if you can’t move around independently, then it becomes much harder to find a place of safety. The lack of accessible advance warning on bombardment (if given at all) and no accessible evacuation routes puts disabled people at great risk, with many disabled people, alongside their families who refused to leave them, having been killed in their homes due to these failures.

While displacement is often a significant civilian experience in conflict zones, in Gaza, this has been unprecedented, with 90% of the population being displaced, some as many as 20 times, and 92% of buildings having been damaged or destroyed – let us remind you here that targeting civilian infrastructure is illegal under international law. In a report from Human Rights Watch on the experience of disabled Palestinian children, Ghazal, a 14-year-old disabled girl told us:

From the day the war broke out, they destroyed what was inside us. They demolished my house and my room, which held all my memories. They took everything that helped me to live, like my devices, my boot and my wheelchair. How can I go back to how I was without all this?

As Ghazal told us: for disabled people, with the destruction of their homes also goes all familiarity, coping mechanisms, wellness, and life-saving routines and aids. We know as disabled people that where we keep our equipment, how we take our medication, the food we have access to and the strict rules by which we need to live become impossible amidst the complete chaos of continued forced displacement or bombed-out homes.

Stories we must honour

Alongside these realities are some incredibly harrowing personal stories of disabled people intentionally targeted by the Israeli army. Some of us may remember the story of Mohammed Bhar, diagnosed with Downs Syndrome and Autism. Information from Islamic Relief told us that:

Mohammad, 24, was killed during Israel’s recent attack on the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City, where he and his family lived. Mohammad’s mother, Nabila, told Islamic Relief that Israeli soldiers forced their way into the family’s home and the military dog started mauling a terrified Mohammad, tearing at his body as he screamed in agony and pleaded for the attack to stop. With Mohammad severely bleeding, the Israeli soldiers moved him to another room on his own, despite the fact that his illness meant his family was usually with him for support at all times. The soldiers refused to allow Mohammad’s mother or sister to enter the room to comfort him or bring him water, and shortly afterwards forced the women to leave the house at gunpoint while he was still alive. Mohammad was left alone in the dark room, critically wounded, scared and thirsty, until he died. His body was only recovered a week later when the Israeli military withdrew and his family and neighbours were able to rush to the house to find his remains

Or there’s the horrific case of Ali Jouda, who is a seventy-six-year-old man from Gaza who has late-stage Dementia. Ali went missing in May 2024, and his family believed him to be killed. They have since discovered that Ali is in prison, kidnapped without charge by the Israeli army who refused to release him because he was unable to identify himself. A member of his family told us:

We have had a solicitor go to the prison to identify him and confirm he has dementia. The IOF said they would release him within the next lot of prisoners. That was 3 months ago and several prisoners have been released since.

One of many stories carrying a universe of meaning

They went on to explain that:

My mother-in-law has lived her entire life witnessing extreme Israeli abuse and torture. She knows first-hand what they are capable of and knows her beloved is in their hands. They have lived their entire life together, and while he has late-stage dementia, he has never forgotten her. People from that generation have accepted they will die in Gaza, they just want to be able to die together.

Early on in this genocide, they were forced at gunpoint to leave their home in Gaza City, and after being moved around, and ended up in Dier al-Balah. The only things Ali could remember at that time were his Mosque and his home, both of which had been razed to the ground. He was constantly saying he wanted to go home, and it was very difficult for the family to find a way to explain to him that it wasn’t possible.

Imagine how difficult it would be to try and keep someone safe who has no understanding of what is happening when the slightest wrong move can have you killed. Of course they were all watching Ali very closely, but when you are also having to watch out for bombs, and snipers, and the chance to grab some desperately needed food or water, it’s not easy to also keep down a fully grown man with a strong personality.

I imagine he went looking for his home, or maybe more likely his mosque; he would have had no idea that he could no longer cross certain lines or walk freely through the Gaza Strip. The family searched for him for months, and were repeatedly shot at, so we had to convince them to stop for their own safety. They spent months accepting that he might be dead – imagine mentally going through all of that, and then finding out he was alive and was being tortured for not having the ability to remember who he is.

Ali’s story is unfortunately one of many.

While each Palestinian person’s individual story carries within it a whole universe of meaning which we must honour, we must also talk about the systemic impact of the actions of the Israeli government. When we talk about mass starvation, blockades of vital medical supplies, of blocking life-saving aid and medical evacuations, we don’t often hear Disability Justice mentioned. But the truth is, these are all Disability Justice issues – and it is our belief that Israeli military policy in Gaza systematically targets disabled people, while also making disablement a weapon of war.

Deliberate disablement of Palestinians

Palestinians have experienced disablement en masse as the Israeli army continues its bombardment – the use of explosive weaponry in densely populated civilian areas result in fractures, peripheral nerve injuries, amputations, spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, crush injuries and burns, with gunshot wounds also common. The collapse of the healthcare system, impact of continued starvation and the ongoing siege mean that many injuries sustained lead to complications and disease – leading to further disablement or suffering caused by complications. Again, these are not just the unfortunate consequence of war. Civilian homes are targeted, medical care has been decimated, and even the artificial limb factory in Gaza was bombed by Israel. Save the Children estimated that during 2024, every day in Gaza, 15 children were left with life-long impairments. This is alongside the classroom of children that are estimated to be killed daily.

It is well-documented that the Israeli army has long been carrying out the deliberate maiming and disablement of Palestinians. Between 2007 – 2017, the rate of disabled people grew by 50%, while during the peaceful protests that became known as ‘the Great March of Return’ in 2018, a call for Israel to lift it’s illegal 11-year blockade of Gaza, 200 people were killed. In addition, 29,000 people were injured in one year, many shot by snipers in the knees.

The largest number of child amputees in recorded history

Amnesty International suggest that the Israeli army was already “intentionally trying to inflict life-changing injuries” on Palestinians, reporting that military experts show that the Israeli army were using high-velocity weapons designed to cause maximum damage to peaceful Palestinian protestors between 2018-2019.

More recently, since October 2023, there are more child amputees in Gaza than anywhere in the world, with UNICEF estimating between 3,000-4,000 child amputees alone, and many of them having undergone amputations without anaesthesia due to Israel’s intentional blockade of Gaza, a reality that has haunted us for months.

This is the largest cohort of child amputees in recorded history; many of them have more than one missing limb and all of them will need medical care and repeated operations as their bodies grow. Small numbers have made it to other countries for medical care, but the UK has refused to take in injured children from Gaza, other than those privately funded by Project Pure Hope, though this is reportedly set to change.

Systemic torture causes mass disablement

B’Tselem, a well-respected Israeli human rights organisation, recently released a report Welcome to Hell which documents physical and psychological abuse, absence and denial of medical treatment, and starvation in Israeli prisons and “network of torture camps”. Systematic torture causes disablement, poor conditions, and denied access to healthcare causes disablement.

Keeping disabled Palestinians, as in the case of Ali Jouda, in detention causes untold terror and suffering. The Israeli Prison Service reports that they hold over 9,000 Palestinians including 113 children, but reports on ‘blacksite’ detention centres potentially increase the figure by hundreds.

It feels impossible to find the right words to honour the fortitude of Palestinians, but it is important not to ignore the life-changing impact of the occupation and genocide on the mental health of Palestinians. A 2020 study found that half of the children in Gaza already had PTSD due to the impact of living through Israel’s occupation, and now the IRC reports that there are 17,000 unaccompanied children in Gaza, who have lost entire families, or have been separated from their parents, each one carrying their own story of trauma and loss.

We wonder if Amir, the young boy who walked 12km barefoot just to find food, before being fatally shot at a ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ aid distribution site was one of them? Those 17,000 are not a statistic, each of them fiercely and beautifully human as any of the children we hold dear.

Entrenched trauma from ritual humiliation and collective punishment

Doctor Samah Jabr, chair of the Palestinian ministry of health’s mental health unit told us that trauma in Palestine is so deep, so entrenched, and so inseparable from the ritual humiliation and collective punishment meted out against Palestinians by the Israeli occupation, that it forces us to re-think Western approaches to mental health altogether.

Doctor Gabor Maté confirmed that:

the truth is, the Palestinians have been oppressed and suppressed and murdered and controlled and dispossessed for decades. That’s just the truth. There’s no post-traumatic stress disorder here, because the trauma is never post.

When Gaza is rebuilt for Gazans, it will have to be the most accessible place on Earth, in every way.

Starvation as disablement

Currently, many more Palestinians in the besieged Gaza strip are dying from starvation due to an Israeli blockade of all food, medicines, water, and fuel. While the most recent blockade has been the most serious, disabled people in Gaza have been dying from malnutrition, and lack of access to specialist food, treatment, and aid for months. Some readers may remember the distressing images of Fadi who nearly starved to death due to the lack of specialist food available to meet his needs. Some commentators tried to justify and excuse his starvation because of his underlying health condition, as if disabled people are somehow less valuable.

Today, the forced starvation has been described as a disaster and “unlike anything we have seen in this century” according to the World Food Programme. By December 2023, Gazans accounted for 80% of all people in the world experiencing catastrophic hunger, though global starvation statistics have changed dramatically, with millions facing humanitarian crisis in Sudan and Congo.

Starving to death has been described by an emergency doctor working in Gaza as one of the most:

undignified and barbaric ways to kill…it is intended to be protracted and maximise suffering.

For those who don’t die of starvation itself, bodily shutdown will make them more susceptible to disease. And those survive this horror do not survive without consequence. As the Bengal famine taught us, bodies that have adapted to starvation produce far-reaching, intergenerational consequences on long-term health and disablement in future generations, as well as our own.

Systemic targeting of disabled people

There is increasing evidence of the systemic targeting of journalists, healthcare workers, teachers, and children, but very few people have spoken about the blockade and systematic targeting of the healthcare system in Gaza as a deliberate assault on the right to life of disabled Palestinians.

Let us be clear – the decimation of a healthcare system is a Disability Justice issue.

Since October 2023, the World Health Organisation has recorded 697 attacks on healthcare in Gaza, reporting that at least 94% of all hospitals are damaged or destroyed as of 22 May 2025, and only 6% of Gaza’s health infrastructure is functional. Hospitals and healthcare workers are protected under international law, making it illegal to attack them, and yet OCHA have confirmed that 1400 healthcare workers have been killed.

The documentary ‘Doctors Under Attack’ aired on Channel 4 after being banned from airing on the BBC, shows how healthcare workers and their families have been intentionally, systematically murdered, kidnapped and held at Israeli detention ‘blacksites’.

In 2020, Human Rights Watch reported that over a decade of Israeli restrictions on Gaza, including access to assistive devices, inadequate access to electricity to power devices and aids, harms disabled people in Palestine. It has become increasingly clear that this is not just an unfortunate consequence of war but that disabled Palestinians are particularly targeted alongside other groups.

Israel’s intentional siege, which includes electricity and running water, means that life-saving medical equipment (if salvaged from the wreckage) could not run anyway, while medical equipment and essential medicines, including insulin, are also blocked from entering Gaza.

Why this matters for disabled people in the UK

There is a very basic argument to be made here, that as global citizens, as human beings, we should care about the fate of Palestinians. Moreover, solidarity doesn’t need to be conditional or transactional. We know that many of our colleagues who work in DDPOs care deeply. What we are calling for is a shift in the politics and leadership of disabled-led organisations at an institutional level to recognise that what is happening in Palestine is a Disability Justice issue, relevant to our organisations for all the reasons (and many more) outlined above.

The disabled peoples’ movement emerged from a deep understanding that societies in which human rights are accepted as conditional are almost always the first to diminish the rights of disabled people. Collective liberation of all who face dehumanisation is essential to the shared survival of all of us who deviate from the ‘norm’.

The fates of those of us who are forced to live on the margins – who face state-sanctioned violence merely for existing – must understand that Palestine is currently the most important frontier on which our shared fight against oppression and dehumanisation is fought. We’ve already experienced examples of harassment of disabled people in the UK by supporters of the genocide. Recently, GB News aired a discussion about starving or even shooting Disabled benefits claimants.

The rallying cry ‘Welfare not Warfare’ is not enough alone

When Francesca Albanese, UN Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, speaks out against genocide and faces sanctions from the USA over naming literal war criminals – what credibility is left when the UN speaks out about crimes against disabled people in the UK? When the UN system is undermined by governmental disregard for international law and is prevented from doing its work, then it can no longer speak on anyone’s behalf.

In recent years the UN has made important interventions for disabled people in the UK, such as finding that the government was guilty of “grave and systematic violations” of disabled people’s rights. More recently, the UN raised concerns about the impact of planned changes to Universal Credit. So our fates are deeply intertwined, because the culture of dehumanisation, the degradation of legal protections, the de-sensitisation to suffering – is coming for all of us.

We see already in the UK that the right to protest, so critical to many of the gains by the disabled people’s movement over the years, is being rolled back and that direct action is being conflated with terrorism. We know that improvements to our rights don’t come from policy briefs and sanitised disagreement alone, and that direct action forms an important part of bringing about change and upholding people’s rights.

The reality is that today, the protest tactics of the Disability Action Network would be outlawed by the government, and this reality undermines all our rights. These connections are even more literal and visceral when we understand that the UK government is deeply implicated in aiding and abetting the genocide.

Solidarity with Palestine is central to the work of disability politics

The government has prioritised spending on warmongering and instead proposed yet more dramatic cuts to the welfare state after years of austerity, a link that the Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and allies’ campaign ‘welfare not warfare’ perfectly captures.

In the UK, many passionate disabled people have been speaking out and visibly protesting against the genocide because they have understood that this is a Disability Justice, and grave human rights issue. However, at an institutional level, apart from an early solidarity statement from Disability Rights UK (DRUK), which was one of the first to be made by any UK-charity, most of our representative organisations have chosen to remain in complicit silence.

Maybe they’re worried about what the Charity Commission or their funders might say, or they’re worried about the future of their service delivery. However, speaking out for disabled Palestinians, advocating for support of the UN, and maintaining a deep clarity in the leadership of our organisations, whether we usually speak out about international issues or not, is absolutely central to the work of disability politics and is integral to all our missions to achieve justice for all disabled people.

Featured image via the Canary

By Lyla Adwan-Kamara and Aman Ahluwalia-Hinrichs

This post was originally published on Canary.