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human rights watch
Lebanese Doctors Warn Israel Is Inflicting Gaza-Style Devastation on Their Healthcare System
“There’s a new kind of brazenness in declaring an intent to commit unlawful attacks,” said a researcher for Human Rights Watch. “It appears impunity has emboldened the Israeli military."
Apr 06, 2026
Doctors in Lebanon are warning that the Israeli military appears to be waging a campaign of deliberate destruction on their country's healthcare system.
In an interview with The Associated Press published Monday, Sidon-based surgeon Dr. Mohammed Ziara, who previously worked in Gaza City, said that he believes Israel is trying to inflict the same kind of damage on the Lebanese healthcare system that it inflicted in Gaza, when it regularly bombed hospitals and other healthcare facilities.
“I’ve lived this before,” Ziara told the AP, referring to Israel's attack on Gaza that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians. "I cannot go back to Gaza now. But I can be here, in Lebanon."
The AP noted that Israel is justifying bombings of Lebanese hospitals by claiming that Hezbollah is using them as headquarters for storing weapons and plotting attacks. Israel made the same claims about Hamas militants being stationed in Gaza hospitals.
"Israel has increasingly targeted Lebanese first responders and medical centers, forcing several hospitals to evacuate," the AP reported.
Human Rights Watch researcher Ramzi Kaiss told the AP that, while Israel has launched attacks on Lebanon before, the country now seems even more willing to attack civilian infrastructure than in the past.
“There’s a new kind of brazenness in declaring an intent to commit unlawful attacks,” Kaiss explained. “It appears impunity has emboldened the Israeli military."
Human rights activists for the last several weeks have been trying to draw attention to Israel's attacks on Lebanese healthcare.
Kristine Beckerle, deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said in March that Israel is using "the same deadly playbook it used in 2024 in Lebanon to kill dozens of health workers and devastate healthcare services."
Beckerle also slammed Israel's justifications for bombing healthcare infrastructure.
"Throwing out accusations claiming that healthcare facilities and ambulances are being used for military purposes without providing any evidence," Beckerle said, "does not justify treating hospitals, medical facilities or medical transport as battlefields or treating doctors and paramedics as targets. Under international humanitarian law parties to a conflict must ensure to distinguish between military objectives and civilian objects."
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, recently flagged reports from Lebanese healthcare workers who "say Israeli bombing has deliberately targeted medical workers and facilities in southern Lebanon" in "a systematic effort to make the area unlivable."
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Rights Groups Demand EU Suspend Trade Deal With Israel Over 'Appalling' Death Penalty Law
A political group in the European Parliament and dozens of human rights groups have called for suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
Apr 02, 2026
Global criticism has mounted since Israeli lawmakers approved a death penalty law targeting Palestinians earlier this week, including fresh calls for the European Union to suspend a key political and trade deal, the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
On Thursday, 31 groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam, said in a joint statement that "we are appalled by the Israeli Knesset's decision to approve a bill that makes death penalty effectively mandatory in the West Bank and which will de facto apply exclusively to Palestinians."
The coalition also specifically put pressure on the EU, noting that the bloc "has consistently held that capital punishment is cruel, inhuman, and incompatible with human dignity under all circumstances," and that the Israeli law violates "the right to life and protections enshrined in international humanitarian and human rights law, such as the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Hague Regulations, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention Against Torture."
"Diplomatic engagement by the EU and its member states urging Israel to reverse course has so far proven ineffective. This appalling development occurs amid an ongoing manmade humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, which a UN Commission of Inquiry, multiple Palestinian, Israeli, and international organizations, and independent experts have characterized as constituting genocide, and against the backdrop of an accelerating de facto annexation of the West Bank," the coalition wrote, pointing to the July 2024 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice. "The adoption of the death penalty law is thus part of a pattern of discriminatory policies and practices against Palestinians."
The coalition continued:
In furtherance of these policies, Israel has already crossed established EU red lines: the advancement of settlement construction in the E1 area, which breaks the territorial contiguity of the West Bank, with the intent to prevent a future Palestinian state; the ban on [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East] and attacks on its facilities, including schools and clinics built and run with EU contributions; the expulsion of international NGOs through restrictive registration procedures; forced evictions of Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem; forced displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians and widespread demolitions of Palestinian homes and infrastructure in the West Bank, including EU-funded projects; persistent impunity for abuses by Israeli security forces and state-backed settler violence; reports of widespread and systemic torture and mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners; restrictions on religious freedoms; attacks on journalists; and denial of access to EU officials.
As also recalled by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kallas in her statement... the EU-Israel Association Agreement establishes respect for democratic principles as an essential element of EU-Israel relations. A review conducted by the EU in June 2025 based on Article 2 of the agreement found Israel in breach of its human rights obligations for serious abuses against Palestinians and violations of the laws of war, both in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
When the bloc refused to halt the trade deal over Gaza last year, Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard called the decision "a cruel and unlawful betrayal—of the European project and vision, predicated on upholding international law and fighting authoritarian practices, of the European Union's own rules, and of the human rights of Palestinians."
The coalition concluded Thursday: "Nine months on, the time for action is long overdue. The European Union must uphold its stated principles and legal obligations by finally suspending, as a minimum immediate measure, the trade component of the EU-Israel Association Agreement and adopting other measures."
One political group in the European Parliament, the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D Group), also expressed "deep concern following the Israeli Knesset's approval of legislation introducing the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorism," and put pressure on the European Council, which is made up of the bloc's heads of state or government.
"The S&D Group is calling on the European Council to urgently suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement in light of Israel's continuous and grave violations of Article 2 of the Agreement on human rights, which is central to the partnership," the group said in a Tuesday statement, the day after the law passed.
Yannis Maniatis, S&D Group vice president for foreign affairs, said that "reintroducing the death penalty is a step back into the past and yet another blow to the values that underpin our partnership with Israel. We cannot and will not remain silent."
"When a partner repeatedly ignores the warnings from its friends and civil society alike, there must be consequences," added Maniatis, a Greek politician. "It is high time the Council suspended the EU-Israel Association Agreement. The time to act is now."
The S&D Group's statement came not only after the death penalty law's passage but also amid a European citizens' initiative collecting signatures to demand the suspension in response to Israel's "unprecedented level of killing and injury of civilians, a large-scale displacement of population, and the systematic destruction of hospitals and medical facilities" in the Gaza Strip. So far, over 645,000 people from EU member states, of the necessary 1 million, have signed on to that call.
The Council of the European Union—which is composed of national ministers from each member state—this week issued a statement reiterating the EU's "principled position against the death penalty in all cases and in all circumstances," condemning the Israeli law as "a grave regression," and highlighting deep concerns about its "de facto discriminatory character."
"Consistent with our global efforts towards universal abolition of the death penalty, the EU urges Israel to abide by its previous principled position and with its obligations under international law, as well as its commitment to democratic principles, as reflected also in the provisions of the EU-Israel Association Agreement," the council said.
However, there have been no signals from EU leadership about progress toward suspending the agreement in light of the law's passage.
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With Nearly 50 Boats Attacked, US Strikes Highlight ‘Pattern of Unlawful Use of Lethal Force’: Human Rights Watch
"When unlawful force is repeated over time, it risks becoming normalized."
Mar 31, 2026
The Trump administration's most recent attack on a boat in the Caribbean, which killed four people last week, "highlights a sustained pattern of unlawful use of lethal force outside any context of armed conflict, amounting to extrajudicial executions," Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.
The US military announced last Wednesday that it had conducted its 47th attack on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The Trump administration has presented little evidence for its claim that the targeted boats have been engaged in trafficking drugs to the United States. At least 163 people have been killed in these attacks since September 2025, all of them without trial.
Human Rights Watch is part of a chorus of international organizations and observers that have condemned the boat bombing campaign as acts of murder in flagrant violation of international law.
“These strikes aren’t one-off incidents, they’re part of a pattern of using military force where the law does not permit it, over and over again,” said Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “The fact that these strikes have faded from public attention does not make these violations any less grave or unlawful.”
The organization noted that there is no ongoing military conflict in the Caribbean or eastern Pacific that would make those traveling by boat legitimate targets.
And while the US government has provided scant evidence that those it has killed were trafficking drugs, Human Rights Watch said that even if evidence of drug trafficking existed, suspected criminals are still not lawful targets of lethal force unless they pose an imminent threat to the lives of others.
The boat strikes have continued in the background as President Donald Trump has launched attacks against Venezuela and Iran, both of which international organizations have described as acts of aggression that violate the laws of war.
Trump has also enacted a crippling economic blockade of Cuba with the explicit goal of toppling its government so the US can "take" the island, and has previously threatened to use economic leverage or the US military to forcibly annex Greenland.
“When unlawful force is repeated over time, it risks becoming normalized,” Yager said. “That’s dangerous because it opens the door to using lethal force whenever and wherever a government wishes and without constraints.”
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