More than ۱,۷۰۰ healthcare workers have been killed during the genocide in Gaza. Israel has detained hundreds more without charges. Doctors, nurses and paramedics who stayed to treat the wounded have themselves become casualties of this war.
When medical staff are killed, imprisoned or disappeared, it is not only they who pay the price. Patients lose the people they rely on to keep them alive.
This is something delegates who gather in Rotterdam this week for the General Assembly of the World Medical Association (WMA) must remember. The fate of their Palestinian colleagues should be put on the table, not as a debating point, but as a test of whether the world’s governing body of medical ethics still means what it says.
The WMA already recognised the seriousness of these issues last year by adopting a resolution on the protection of healthcare in conflict. That was an important step and a welcome reaffirmation of the principles of medical neutrality. The challenge now is to ensure this is followed by the commitment of every medical association to explicitly support it and to use its influence to pressure governments to act.
If the WMA Assembly needs a single face for this file, it could be the one of Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the paediatrician who was the head of Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza until Israeli forces stormed it in December ۲۰۲۴.
He’s been held now for more than ۲۲ months without charge under Israel’s Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law, which permits indefinite detentions. He reportedly continues to endure prolonged solitary confinement, beatings, severe weight loss and untreated pre-existing conditions. An international petition for his release has drawn the signatures of more than ۹۷۰ medical professionals from ۴۱ countries.
Alongside him stands Dr Mazen al-Rantisi, the ۷۱-year-old family physician from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, known as the “doctor of the poor”. He was arrested in June in a predawn raid on his home.
In addition, our longtime Doctors Without Borders (MSF) colleague, Dr Mohammed Hassan Ali Obeid, a respected ۴۳-year-old Palestinian orthopaedic surgeon and father of three children, has been detained under the Unlawful Combatants Law in Israel for more than ۶۰۰ days without charge.
Although detained health workers have been released, more than ۸۰ remain in Israeli custody alongside at least a dozen arrested from the West Bank.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has recorded ۱,۰۰۰ attacks on healthcare, which have resulted in more than ۱,۰۰۰ deaths and ۱,۷۰۰ injuries in Gaza since October ۷, ۲۰۲۳. Roughly ۹۰ percent of Gaza’s health infrastructure has been destroyed or damaged. In August ۲۰۲۵, United Nations experts stated that the systematic destruction of the health system amounts to “medicide”.
In the West Bank, where no wartime emergency provides cover, the WHO also documented more than ۱,۰۰۰ attacks on healthcare since October ۷, ۲۰۲۳, with ۴۲ deaths and at least ۲۱۸ injuries.
Ambulances are stopped at checkpoints and their crews taken. Medics trying to reach people injured in settler attacks have themselves been obstructed. Dialysis and oncologic patients stay home because the checkpoints make the journey to treatment impossible. Healthcare workers have been shot, detained and killed during Israeli military raids.
All of this represents Israel’s deliberate and systematic endeavour to dismantle Palestinians’ capacity to provide care. This is consistent with its clear and blatant disregard for Palestinian life.
The WMA Assembly should speak plainly about what is happening. It should call publicly for the release of detained Palestinian doctors, including Abu Safia, al-Rantisi and Obeid. It should press for independent access to those still being held. And it should back independent investigations into attacks on healthcare in Gaza and the West Bank with the findings made public regardless of where they lead.
This is an opportunity to collectively pressure fellow medical associations, political authorities and any relevant bodies to take action.
What lies before the Rotterdam assembly is a duty. One that reaffirms loudly, structurally, universally the founding proposition of the WMA: that membership carries an ethical responsibility, which does not flex with geography or alliances.
Healthcare workers are not targets. Either a white coat is worth protecting everywhere, or it is protected nowhere. The test is not simply whether we affirm these principles, but whether we uphold them when it matters most.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
