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physicians for human rights
WHO Chief Demands Swift Medical Evacuations for 9,000 Injured, Sick Patients in Gaza
Israel is currently attempting to send several patients back to the besieged enclave from East Jerusalem, where they have been receiving cancer treatment.
Mar 30, 2024
The head of the World Health Organization on Saturday demanded that Israel speed up approvals for medical evacuations from Gaza as the number of people who urgently need life-saving healthcare reached roughly 9,000—and as Israeli officials threatened to send several Palestinian patients back to the besieged enclave from the East Jerusalem hospital where they've received cancer treatment.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, warned that with only 10 of Gaza's 36 hospitals "minimally functional" following repeated attacks on the enclave's healthcare system, "thousands of patients continue to be deprived of healthcare."
At the beginning of March, WHO assessed that about 8,000 patients needed to be immediately evacuated from Gaza to receive treatment for cancer, kidney failure, and other chronic diseases as well as injuries from Israel's relentless bombing of civilian infrastructure.
That number has grown by about 1,000 in recent weeks, Tedros said.
More than 3,400 sick and injured people have been taken abroad via the southern border town of Rafah since Israel began its bombardment on October in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
"But many more need to be evacuated," said Tedros. "We urge Israel to speed up approvals for evacuations, so that critical patients can be treated. Every moment matters."
As Tedros called on Israel to swiftly approve medical evacuations, human rights advocates condemned Israeli authorities who aim to deport patients with cancer back to Gaza from an East Jerusalem hospital where they've been receiving advanced treatment since before the October 7 attack on southern Israel.
"Returning residents to Gaza during a military conflict and a humanitarian crisis is against international law and poses a deliberate risk to innocent lives," Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said in a statement. "All the more so when it concerns patients who may face a death sentence due to unsanitary conditions and hunger, along with the unlikely availability of medical care."
At least 22 patients from Gaza, including several children, have been receiving treatment at Augusta Victoria Hospital, having received authorization from Israel prior to the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) current escalation.
"I arrived here in Jerusalem with my son Hamza on September 27 last year," Qamar Abu Zoar toldThe Guardian on Saturday. "Hamza, who is four and a half years old, has a brain tumor and needs treatment that he couldn't receive in Gaza. While we were here, the war broke out. And since then, we have been stranded in this hospital, while my other two younger children are in the north of Gaza with my husband."
The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which oversees civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories, has urged hospital officials to provide a list of patients who could be sent back to Gaza, where patients in the remaining hospitals are suffering from infections due to the use of improvised and unsterilized medical equipment, as well as from worsening malnutrition.
Israel's near-total blockade of humanitarian aid into Gaza has affected food and medicines, and CNN reported earlier this month that anesthetics, anesthesia machines, oxygen tanks, and ventilators are frequently rejected by Israeli inspectors who examine aid trucks.
Last week, the Israeli High Court of Justice halted an effort by COGAT to send 10 patients from Augusta Victoria Hospital back to Gaza, where in many cases their homes and hometowns have been decimated by Israeli bombing and shelling.
COGAT claimed the patients had finished their treatment and said it would work with aid agencies if they had a need for more medical care, coordinating "their stay with the hospitals to safeguard their health."
But as Tedros warned Saturday, the vast majority of hospitals in Gaza are no longer operating.
Israel's High Court has until April 21 to issue a final ruling on whether officials can deport patients to Gaza.
"The hospitals and the medical staff must strongly oppose the release of the patients from their custody," said PHR, "unless a guarantee is given that they will not be returned to Gaza where their lives are in danger."
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30 Israeli Groups Urge Global Community to Help Stop Surging West Bank Settler Violence
"Unfortunately, the Israeli government is supportive of these attacks and does nothing to stop this violence."
Oct 29, 2023
With international focus on the horrors of Israel's assault on Gaza, 30 Israeli human rights and anti-occupation organizations on Sunday aimed to draw attention to a surge in settler violence against Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank.
The coalition of groups—including B'Tselem, Breaking the Silence, and the Israeli arms of Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights—released a joint statement calling on the international community "to act urgently to stop the state-backed wave of settler violence which has led, and is leading to, the forcible transfer of Palestinian communities in the West Bank."
In retaliation for a Hamas-led attack earlier this month—in which over 1,400 Israelis were killed and around 200 others were taken hostage—Israel has waged what some legal scholars are calling a genocidal war, killing more than 8,000 people in Gaza.
"Settlers have been exploiting the lack of public attention to the West Bank, as well as the general atmosphere of rage against Palestinians, to escalate their campaign of violent attacks in an attempt to forcibly transfer Palestinian communities," the coalition noted. "During this period, no fewer than 13 herding communities have been displaced. Many more are in danger of being forced to flee in the coming days if immediate action is not taken."
"Palestinian farmers are particularly vulnerable at this time, during the annual olive harvest season, because if they are unable to pick their olives they will lose a year's income," the groups explained. "Yesterday Bilal Muhammed Saleh from the village of As-Sawiya south of Nablus was murdered while tending to his olive trees. He was the seventh Palestinian to have been killed by settlers since the current war began."
The Palestinian Health Ministry said Saturday that 111 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed since October 7.
Jewish settlers have recently tried to scare Palestinians into fleeing the West Bank by displaying dolls covered in blood or a substance meant to mimic it and distributing leaflets with messages like "Run to Jordan before we kill our enemies and expel you from our Holy Land, promised to us by God."
The coalition said Sunday that "unfortunately, the Israeli government is supportive of these attacks and does nothing to stop this violence. On the contrary: government ministers and other officials are backing the violence and in many cases the military is present or even participates in the violence, including in incidents where settlers have killed Palestinians."
Over the past three weeks, Israeli forces fatal violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has included raids and an airstrike on a mosque in the densely populated Jenin refugee camp.
"Moreover, since the war has begun there has been a growing number of incidents in which violent settlers have been documented attacking nearby Palestinian communities while wearing military uniform and using government-issued weapons," the coalition continued. "With grave concern and with a clear understanding of the political landscape, we recognize that the only way to stop this forcible transfer in the West Bank is a clear, strong, and direct intervention by the international community."
In response to the statement, Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), said on social media that the "world must act."
Meanwhile, in Gaza, Israeli forces have moved to a "second stage" of the war with ground operations, despite global demands for a cease-fire—though notably not from the U.S. government, which provides Israel with billions of dollars in annual military support.
"Israel's major ground offensive in Gaza, following weeks of bombardment that have reduced large parts of neighborhoods to rubble, raises grave concerns for the safety of all civilians caught in the fighting," HRW executive director Tirana Hassan said in a statement Sunday. "Thousands of children and other civilians have already been killed."
"Palestinian armed groups are continuing to indiscriminately launch rockets at Israeli communities," she added. "All civilians, including the many who cannot or do not want to leave their homes in northern Gaza, retain their protections under the laws of war against deliberate, indiscriminate, or disproportionate attacks."
Over objections from Israel and the United States, the U.N. General Assembly on Friday adopted a nonbinding resolution demanding that "all parties immediately and fully comply with their obligations under international law," and calling for "an immediate, durable, and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities."
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'Horrific Milestone': Russian Attacks on Healthcare in Ukraine Top 1,000
"These deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on Ukraine's health system show how Russian forces use these vicious, illegal tactics to control, coerce, and punish civilians," said an expert at Physicians for Human Rights.
Aug 10, 2023
A global coalition on Thursday announced what it called a "horrific milestone" for Russian attacks on Ukrainian health workers, hospitals, and other medical infrastructure since the February 2022 invasion.
"For nearly 1.5 years, we have been witnessing the escalation of attacks on healthcare in Ukraine, reaching a terrifying milestone of over 1,000 incidents since the onset of Russia's full-scale invasion," said Ukrainian Healthcare Center analyst Diana Rusnak in a statement.
"These acts are not collateral damage, but a calculated means of warfare approved by Russia's higher political and military leadership," Rusnak added. "The consequences are profound, causing not only immediate devastation but also impairing the capacity to provide lifesaving care for people. Unless accountability prevails, these crimes will persist unabated."
Lyubov Smachylo, an analyst at the Media Initiative for Human Rights, similarly stressed that "Ukraine's healthcare system is severely affected by Russia's attacks," including combat medics targeted on the battlefield and "held captive in Russian places of detention as prisoners of war, where they are beaten and tortured."
"These actions are a blatant violation of international humanitarian law and are occurring regularly," Smachylo said. "It's important that those responsible for these crimes are held accountable to prevent future violations."
Both of those groups—along with Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Insecurity Insight, and eyeWitness to Atrocities—have tracked attacks on Ukraine's healthcare system throughout the war and in February published a report and interactive map.
The coalition on Thursday released findings of 1,014 attacks through mid-July, including 414 that damaged or destroyed hospitals; 79 on ambulances; 57 affecting children's hospitals; and 40 affecting maternal health facilities. Additionally, at least 148 health workers have been killed and another 106 injured.
One hospital in Donetsk Oblast has ensured repeated shelling, most recently in June. An administrative worker there told researchers that "the missile was aimed at destroying our surgical department. There were no military [troops] there."
The hospital worker continued:
The entire infrastructure in the city was destroyed, there are no schools, no kindergartens. We had a hospital, and it had to be destroyed [by Russian forces] as well. The maternity ward was the first to be hit.
When our accounting department and the blood transfusion center caught fire, [Russian forces] started hitting that area on purpose... [They] burned down.
Carrie Bowker, director at eyeWitness to Atrocities, said that the coalition data "urgently warrants further investigation by prosecutors, and provides strong evidence upon which to pursue accountability for these devastating attacks."
PHR's director of research and investigations, Christian De Vos, agreed, saying that "these deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on Ukraine's health system show how Russian forces use these vicious, illegal tactics to control, coerce, and punish civilians."
"We call on the International Criminal Court as well as other international and domestic prosecutors to urgently prioritize the investigation of attacks on health facilities as both war crimes and crimes against humanity," De Vos declared.
Uliana Poltavets, Ukraine emergency response coordinator at PHR, said that "Russia is also obligated to make reparations, including payment for reconstruction and rehabilitation, for its breaches of international law, and compensate the Ukrainian state and individual Ukrainians for loss of life and injury. International actors should hold Russia to account in this process."
Insecurity Insight director Christina Wille highlighted the need for accountability and justice for similar violence around the world—with armed attacks on schools and hospitals in conflict zones up 112% last year, according to a June United Nations report.
"I have been analyzing attacks on healthcare for many years. These figures are truly staggering," Wille said of conditions in Ukraine.
"At this grim milestone, we should reflect on the horrific consequences of such attacks in Ukraine and in many other countries and territories around the globe, such as Myanmar, Sudan, and the occupied Palestinian territory where health facilities and workers continue to suffer dire levels of violence," she added. "We hope that this marks an inflection point to galvanize concerted action to protect healthcare globally and bring an end to these tragic attacks."
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