This week, reports surfaced that the Trump administration and its consultants have created a plan to relocate the entire population of Gaza to make way for a tourist hub featuring high-tech industry and futuristic tourist resorts—and perhaps no Palestinians. A new open-access article in Middle East Policy suggests that this is just the latest manifestation of the affliction driving the post-October 7 war: “the dehumanization of disregard.”
As the journal prepares to launch both its fall issue and a special virtual publication marking two years since October 7, we invite readers to take a sneak peek of the Early View of recently published articles and our special issue on the Israel-Iran War, as well as a number of free-to-read pieces, including Guy Ziv’s examination of the political power of Israeli reservists. If you find this article useful, please forward to others you believe will benefit, and please follow us on the social media sites X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
In his interrogation of Israel’s approach to the Gaza War, Yagil Levy argues:
Israeli attitudes toward the Gazan population reflect a passive form of dehumanization, characterized by indifference and neglect. This form of dehumanization, which refuses to acknowledge the population, effectively overlooks Gazans’ ability to make a difference by challenging the indirect Israeli control over them and their territory.
This has not simply affected the post-October 7 campaign in Gaza but has been endemic to the state’s assumptions about Arabs since its founding. Levy, head of the Israeli Open University Institute for the Study of Civil-Military Relations, notes that prime ministers and religious leaders have long used dehumanizing language, ascribing to Palestinians labels like “beasts” and “Amalek,” the evil ancient people God commanded the Israelites to destroy.
However, Levy argues, the most potent form of dehumanization, operative among the Israeli public, is disregard. Acknowledgments of Palestinians are focused solely on the leadership, he says, not on the people, and any hints of the larger population are in the form of numbers, not faces or other signs of humanity.
The effects of this disregard are clear, Levy shows. Tel Aviv has moved from dialogue and trying to shape Palestinian consciousness to building barriers and ignoring the needs of the public. “By constructing defensive barriers,” he writes, “Israel signaled a unilateral approach with little regard for the potential repercussions on the people.” This has become institutionalized.
The dehumanization of disregard has been clear in the tens of thousands of deaths in Gaza since the war began, as well as in the continued prosecution of the campaign—long after the Israel Defense Forces has concluded that there are no remaining military targets that would make a difference to the country’s security.
But Levy’s analysis shows that this disregard has resulted not only in the failure of the political process and alleged war crimes, but is also responsible for Israel’s inability to protect its borders. The denial of the Palestinians’ “capacity to make a difference and challenge the indirect Israeli control over the Strip” led to assumptions that the plight of people in the occupied territories could be ignored without consequence.
“Policy makers who genuinely seek to prevent future disasters must recognize that technological superiority and military strategy alone cannot substitute for addressing the fundamental political realities of Palestinian national aspirations,” Levy concludes. “The dehumanization of disregard, whether deployed for security calculations or political expediency, ultimately undermines both ethical imperatives and strategic interests, closing off the only viable path to lasting peace—mutual recognition and political resolution.”
Middle East Policy continues to offer a range of vitally important articles outside of its paywall. Our special issue, The Israel-Iran War, is still available at no charge through September 25. The Summer 2025 journal can be found through this link, and you can read an Early View of our Fall 2025 installment here.
Middle East Policy’s 2025 articles outside the paywall
Free to read for the next three months
Military Reservists and the Resistance to Netanyahu’s Legal Overhaul
Guy Ziv
Free to read for a limited time
Conjuring an Enemy: US Discourse and Policy on Iran, 1979–88
Annie Tracy Samuel
The Impact of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Beliefs on Israel’s War against the Axis of Resistance
Emir Hadžikadunić | Marko Ćuže
Negotiating the Impossible? A WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East
Robert Mason
Max Boot, Reagan: His Life and Legend
Reviewed by A.R. Joyce
Open access
Dehumanization of Disregard: The Case of Gaza
Yagil Levy
After Assad: How Russia Is Losing the Middle East
Namig Abbasov | Emil A. Souleimanov
The Development and Political Effects Of a Pan-Arab Corporate Elite
Hannes Baumann | Alice Hooper
Iran’s Annus Horribilis in 2024: Beaten, but Not Defeated
Thomas Juneau
Myth Busting in a Post-Assad Syria
Rob Geist Pinfold
Turkey’s Long Game in Syria: Moving beyond Ascendance
Şaban Kardaş
Saudi Arabia and Iran: Spoilers or Enablers of Conflict?
Banafsheh Keynoush
Middle Powers and Limited Balancing: Syria and the Post‐October 7 Wars
Chen Kertcher | Gadi Hitman
Demographic Change and Social Cohesion In Post-Islamic State Iraq
Omran Omer Ali | Nazar Ameen Mohammed | Aurélie Broeckerhoff
Out of Proportion: Israel’s Paradox In China’s Middle Eastern Policy
Yitzhak Shichor
Lessons from the Syria-Hezbollah Criminal Syndicate, 1985–2005
Iftah Burman | Yehuda Blanga
Antinomies of Alignment Redux: The United Arab Emirates and the United States
Fred H. Lawson | Matteo Legrenzi
The Role of Postage Stamps in Palestinian National Identity and History
Ido Zelkovitz | Yehiel Limor