MSF urges release of detained Palestinian medics in Israel as World Medical Association prepares for General Assembly in Rotterdam
By Dr Javid Abdelmoneim, International President of MSF
More than 1,700 healthcare workers have been killed during the genocide in Gaza.1 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 disappear, it is not only healthcare workers who pay the price. Patients lose the people they rely on to keep them alive.
When delegates gather in Rotterdam next week for the General Assembly of the World Medical Association (WMA), one file will sit, unavoidably, on the table: the fate of their Palestinian colleagues. 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 has already recognised the seriousness of these issues through the adoption of its 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 their 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 Safiya, the paediatrician who was the head of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza; the last functioning hospital in the north until Israeli forces stormed it in December 2024. He’s been held now for well over 18 months without charge under Israel's Unlawful Combatants Law, which permits indefinite detention. He continues to endure prolonged solitary confinement, severe weight loss, and untreated pre-existing conditions; an international petition for his release has drawn signatories from 41 countries.
Alongside him stands Dr. Mazen Al-Rantisi, the 71-year-old family physician from Ramallah, known as the "doctor of the poor," arrested in June 2026 in a pre-dawn raid on his home.
In addition, our long-time MSF colleague, Dr Mohammed Hassan Ali Obeid, a respected 43-year-old Palestinian orthopaedic surgeon and father of three children, has been detained under the Unlawful Combatant Law in Israel for more than 600 days without charges.
They are not alone: more than 80 healthcare workers remain in Israeli custody,2 among them at least 14 doctors from Gaza held without charge,3 alongside recently arrested West Bank physicians.
The Israeli practice of arbitrarily detaining, torturing, and abusing Palestinian medical staff in Israel is part of its deliberate and systematic endeavour to dismantle Palestinians’ capacity to provide care. This is evident through Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health system, as well as its deliberate weakening of healthcare in the West Bank through financial strain, obstructions, staff shortages, and movement restrictions. This is consistent with Israel’s clear and blatant disregard for Palestinian life.
The Assembly should speak plainly about what is happening. It should call publicly for the release of detained Palestinian doctors, including Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, Dr Mazen Al-Rantisi and Dr Mohammed 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.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has recorded more than 790 attacks on healthcare affecting 125 health facilities, including 34 hospitals. Roughly 90 per cent of Gaza's health infrastructure has been destroyed or damaged;4 UN experts stated in August 2025 that the systematic destruction of the health system amounts to "medicide".5
Of the hundreds of medical workers who have been detained by Israel since 7 October 2023, some have been held for more than 600 days under inhumane conditions, including in some documented cases, treatment consistent with torture.6
And this is not only Gaza. In the West Bank, where no wartime emergency provides cover, WHO documented 98 attacks on healthcare in the first seven months of 2026 alone, with 87 deaths and over 1,600 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 incursions.
This is an opportunity to collectively pressure fellow medical associations, political authorities, and any relevant bodies to take action. The WMA should join the calls to conduct swift, transparent, and impartial investigations into attacks on healthcare in Gaza and the West Bank, while reiterating its call for the release of all arbitrarily detained healthcare workers.
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.
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 alliance. One that holds every member to it.
