Hundreds Of Palestinian Health Workers Remain Unlawfully Detained By Israel: NGOs

The U.N. and aid groups say the disappearance and torture of Palestinian medical workers is part of Israel's wider attack on Gaza's health care system.

Twenty months after the current campaign of violence began in Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian health care workers remain unlawfully detained or disappeared in Israel’s prison system, say medical staff and aid organizations who call it a violation of international humanitarian law that exacerbates the territory’s already-worsening health care crisis.

More than two dozen civil society organizations — including medical groups whose doctors were taken by Israeli forces — signed a statement Monday demanding the immediate and unconditional release of health workers, as well as an end to the seemingly arbitrary detentions and wider attacks on Gaza’s health care system.

“Instead of protection, hundreds of health workers have been forcibly removed from hospital wards and patient bedsides and subjected to prolonged detention in Israeli prisons and military camps,” the joint statement said. “The conditions of many of those still detained remain unknown. Many of those released have reported severe abuse, while some have died in custody.”

Israeli forces have killed more than 1,500 Palestinian health care workers and 460 aid workers since October 2023, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. The military has also detained at least 300 health workers in Gaza and 239 in the West Bank over the same time period, according to the World Health Organization. As of February, aid organizations believe there are at least 185 Palestinian health care workers who remain unlawfully detained.

“These healthcare workers are not combatants, they are not criminals, and they are not mere statistics. They have families and they play life-saving roles in their communities,” Joseph Belliveau, executive director of the Chicago-based aid group MedGlobal, said in a Monday statement.