By: Dr. Hani Ramadan Taleb .
(Exclusively for al-Zaytouna Centre).
A new academic paper published by Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations, titled “Death Production in Gaza after 7 October 2023: Genocide and Necropolitics Amid Limited International Accountability,” by Dr. Hani Taleb, examines shifts in patterns of death production in Gaza following 7/10/2023. It analyzes the relationship between settler colonialism, genocide and necropolitics as frameworks for understanding the mechanisms of death production and the management of life in Gaza Strip (GS).
Using descriptive-analytical and legal methodologies, the study demonstrates how siege, systematic destruction, killing, starvation and displacement have functioned as interconnected tools within an ongoing settler-colonial structure.
It also examines the continuation of these policies in the post-ceasefire phase through the management of survival conditions, while exploring the limits of international accountability and the challenges of enforcing international law.
The study also identifies a close analytical relationship between genocide and necropolitics (the politics of death). Whereas genocide focuses on the targeting of a group’s physical and social existence, necropolitics explains how life and death are managed within a colonial logic that produces conditions of unlivable survival. Thus, the two frameworks are not mutually exclusive; rather, they complement each other in explaining structural violence in the Palestinian context, where material destruction intersects with mechanisms that control the conditions of everyday life.
The study concludes that death production under settler colonialism extends beyond direct violence to include structural tools such as siege, starvation, infrastructure destruction and obstruction of reconstruction, thereby reshaping the very conditions in which life is sustained. Accordingly, death becomes not an exceptional event but a mode of governance through which the social and political existence of the targeted group is continually reconfigured according to the logic of modern colonial control.
The study concludes that the continued grave violations in GS after 7/10/2023 cannot be understood apart from the international system’s political and legal structures. In particular, impunity is reinforced by the limited effectiveness of international accountability mechanisms, especially the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose structural reliance on state cooperation and lack of independent enforcement mechanisms constrain its effectiveness.
Moreover, the study finds that political selectivity, particularly the use of the veto in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), obstructs an effective international response and further widens the gap between established legal norms and their implementation in practice.
The study recommends refining analytical approaches in legal and political scholarship to incorporate the structural dimensions of violence and provide a more comprehensive understanding of its dynamics under settler colonialism. In particular, it advocates using genocide and necropolitics as analytical frameworks, which offer deeper insight into how violence is produced, managed and sustained. Building on this theoretical foundation, the study calls for stronger international accountability mechanisms and more effective enforcement of international humanitarian law.
These measures could narrow the gap between legal norms and their implementation while limiting the political selectivity that undermines international institutions and their capacity to deliver justice.
| Click here to download: >> Academic Paper: Death Production in Gaza after 7 October 2023: Genocide and Necropolitics Amid Limited International Accountability … Dr. Hani Ramadan Taleb (Arabic)  (39 pages, 3.5 MB) |
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