Repeated Israeli attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and nearby operations have brought Gaza’s health care system to its knees, according to a report issued Monday by the U.N. human rights office.
The 19-page report finds, “Israel’s pattern of deadly attacks” on and near hospitals “has led to the destruction of most hospitals in Gaza,” leading to sustained combat in and around many hospitals and “pushing the health care system to the brink of total collapse.”
“The situation has deteriorated to a catastrophic level since October 2023, as this already damaged health system has been targeted, resulting in the killing of hundreds of health and medical professionals,” authors of the report assert.
The report covers the period from Oct. 7, 2023 — when Hamas militants launched a terror attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages — to June 30, 2024.
Hamas has been designated as a terror group by the United States, Britain and other Western countries.
During this period, the report documents at least 136 strikes on at least 27 hospitals and 12 other medical facilities, claiming many casualties among medical staff and civilians and causing significant damage, “if not complete destruction of civilian infrastructure.”
“This report graphically details the destruction of the health care system in Gaza, and the extent of killing of patients, staff, and other civilians in these attacks in blatant disregard for international humanitarian and human rights law,” Volker Türk, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement coinciding with the publication of the report.
He said the report raises serious concerns about Israel’s compliance with international law. It points out that medical personnel and hospitals are specifically protected under international humanitarian law, “provided they do not commit, or are not used to commit, outside their humanitarian function, acts harmful to the enemy.”
“As if the relentless bombing and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza were not enough, the one sanctuary where Palestinians should have felt safe in fact became a death trap,” Türk said. “The protection of hospitals during warfare is paramount and must be respected by all sides, at all times.”
Israeli response
Israel has vigorously refuted these charges. In an 11-page response, Israel’s Permanent Mission in Geneva described this fourth “thematic report” by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights as one of many examples “of the inherent obsession of OHCHR with vilifying Israel.”
It accused the agency of dismissing “well-documented evidence of Hamas military activities in health facilities” and of its “unwillingness to recognize Hamas’s systemic exploitation of Gazan medical facilities for terror purposes.”
The Permanent Mission called the methodology employed in OHCHR reports as “fundamentally flawed.” It criticized the agency’s reliance on “unreliable sources” and justified its attacks on hospitals on the grounds that these health care centers were being used by Palestinian armed groups.
“There is ample evidence regarding Hamas terror activity in medical facilities,” the Permanent Mission stated. “Hamas embeds its tunnel system and infrastructure within the premises of medical facilities as a matter of strategy and utilizes them as arms caches and accessible headquarters for its operatives.”
The OHCHR reports attacks on hospitals have occurred in each of the areas in which the Israeli military has conducted ground operations starting in November 2023 with an attack on Al-Shifa Medical Complex and other hospitals in Gaza City.
The attacks continue to this day. The report notes that “The appalling destruction wrought by the Israeli military’s attacks on the Kamal Adwan hospital last Friday — leaving the population of North Gaza with almost no access to adequate health care — reflects the pattern of attacks documented in the report.”
Reacting to the attack on the Kamal Adwan hospital, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, expressed alarm Sunday at the ongoing attacks across the Gaza Strip and the airstrike on Kamal Adwan hospital, warning that “the very means of people’s survival are being dismantled.”
According to the World Health Organization, 15 out of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain “partially functional,” nine in the south and six in the north.
“The health system is under severe threat,” said Tedros Adhanan Gebgreyesus, WHO director-general, noting that “hospitals in Gaza have once again become battlegrounds.”
The OHCHR report finds the increasingly limited healthcare system is preventing many of those with trauma injuries from receiving timely and possibly life-saving treatment. It says attacks on hospitals in Gaza also are having serious implications for patients with “initially non-fatal conditions, potentially rendering them fatal.”
“Women, especially pregnant women, are suffering gravely. Many women are giving birth with no or minimal pre- and postnatal care, increasing the risk of preventable maternal and child mortality,” it said. It added that people with chronic diseases, such as kidney failure, hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease, also have lost access to their treatment, “placing them at risk of worsening health outcomes and death.”
Authors of the report say, “Intentionally directing attacks against hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are treated, provided they are not military objectives … and intentionally launching disproportionate attacks, are also war crimes.”
It added that “Under certain circumstances, the deliberate destruction of health care facilities may amount to a form of collective punishment, which would also constitute a war crime.”
Human rights chief Türk is calling for independent, thorough and transparent investigations of all of these incidents, “and full accountability for all violations of international humanitarian and human rights law which have taken place.”
In response to this appeal, Israel’s Permanent Mission in Geneva stated, “The State of Israel reaffirms its commitment to international law, and remains committed to examining and investigating any exceptional incidents through its established mechanisms.”
