 Gaza is deliberately being made uninhabitable. Infectious diseases are tearing through Gaza, whose health care system has been rendered almost non-existent, and people are beginning to starve in massive numbers. All of this is due to concrete policy decisions made by Israel in its horrific assault on the Gaza Strip. In an article titled, Gaza's health system is on its knees as Israel pushes into conunis. The Washington Post reports that the mass displacement of nearly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza has led to overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions that are rapidly giving rise to disease. Meanwhile, the Gaza Health Ministry and other medical workers said they were recording new cases of acute hepatitis, scabies, measles, and upper respiratory infections, mostly among children, the Post reports. Infectious diseases are spreading fast, said Imad al-Hams, a physician at the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafa, as people crowd into tiny slivers of land to escape advancing Israeli forces. In a recent interview with CNN, Doctors Without Borders emergency coordinator Marie R. Perot describes conditions in Gaza as apocalyptic, saying living conditions at the al-Aqsa Hospital she's working from can barely be described as living conditions anymore. The health care system is completely collapsed at the moment, Perot told Al Jazeera. The UN World Food Program reports that half of Gaza's population is now starving due to Israeli siege warfare in the collapse of civilian infrastructure. In northern Gaza, that figure goes up to 9 in 10. All of this aligns perfectly with Israeli policies of massive forced evacuations, attacking health care facilities, and laying complete siege to the Gaza Strip. A doctor named Hafez Abu Kausa writes the following in a new article for Time titled What I've Seen Treating Patients in Gaza's Remaining Hospitals. Quote, Gaza's health care system has almost completely collapsed as a result of Israel's ongoing bombardment. Hospitals and ambulances have been repeatedly attacked. According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, more than 250 medical workers have been killed so far, including two of my colleagues from Doctors Without Borders, who died while performing their duties at Al-Aqsa Hospital in northern Gaza. Of Gaza's 36 hospitals, only 11 are still functioning in any capacity according to the World Health Organization. Hospitals in the north like Al-Shifa are barely functioning at all, as basic medicines and fuel have run out. My colleagues have been performing amputations by flashlight and without anesthesia. When Israeli soldiers raided Al-Shifa a few weeks ago, a move the head of the WHO called totally unacceptable, doctors and staff were forced to abandon patients too sick or injured to evacuate. Some of those who refused to leave, including the hospital's director, were arrested alongside dozens of others. At Al-Nazar Children's Hospital, soldiers ordered staff to leave the patients, including four premature babies who required oxygen, who were later found dead. This all also aligns perfectly with the Netanyahu government's reported agenda to thin the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip to a minimum, and with all the other calls for ethnic cleansing, we keep seeing pushed by Israeli officials and thought leaders over and over again. It also aligns perfectly with the suggestion made last month by an influential Israeli national security leader named Ghior Island, a retired major general for the IDF. The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics, Island wrote. We must not shy away from this as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers. Island was completely dismissive of the idea that there are innocent people in Gaza, a sentiment we're seeing pushed harder and harder as Israel draws nearer and nearer to a very, very dark chapter in the history of human civilization. They are not only Hamas fighters with weapons, but also all the civilian officials, including hospital administrators and school administrators, and also the entire Gaza population that enthusiastically supports Hamas and cheered on its atrocities on October 7th, Island wrote, adding, Who are the poor women of Gaza? They are the mothers, sisters, or wives of Hamas murderers. Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women without whom he could not engage in terrorism, Island adds. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons. Nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raise the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there. When people talk about genocide in Gaza, they're not just talking about the thousands of civilians who've been killed in Israeli airstrikes. The policies Israel has been deliberately putting in place have the potential to kill many, many more people than that in the coming months. And if Netanyahu and his goons get their way, that's exactly what will happen.