WMA Delegates Pressed to Demand Release of Detained Palestinian Medical Staff

Over 1,700 healthcare workers have been killed during the ongoing conflict in Gaza, while Israel has detained hundreds more without filing charges. Physicians, nurses, and paramedics who remained to treat the wounded have themselves become casualties of this war.

The loss of medical personnel—through killing, imprisonment, or disappearance—takes a toll far beyond the individuals themselves; patients lose the lifelines upon which their survival depends.

Delegates gathering in Rotterdam this week for the World Medical Association (WMA) General Assembly must keep this reality in mind. The fate of their Palestinian colleagues should be placed on the agenda not as a debating point, but as a litmus test of whether the world’s governing body of medical ethics still stands for what it declares.

Last year, the WMA acknowledged the gravity of these concerns by adopting a resolution on the protection of healthcare in conflict, a significant step and a welcome reaffirmation of medical neutrality. The challenge now is to ensure every affiliated medical association commits to explicitly supporting this and uses its influence to pressure governments into action.

If the WMA Assembly requires a singular representative for this file, it could be Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the paediatrician who headed Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza, before Israeli forces stormed the facility in December 2024.

Abu Safia has been held for more than 22 months without charge under Israel’s Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law, which permits indefinite detention. Reports indicate he continues to endure prolonged solitary confinement, beatings, severe weight loss, and untreated pre-existing conditions. An international petition for his release has garnered signatures from more than 970 medical professionals across 41 countries.

Standing alongside him is Dr Mazen al-Rantisi, a 71-year-old family physician from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, known as the “doctor of the poor.” He was arrested in June during a predawn raid on his home.

Also detained is Dr Mohammed Hassan Ali Obeid, a respected 43-year-old Palestinian orthopaedic surgeon and father of three, and a longtime Doctors Without Borders (MSF) colleague. He has been held under the Unlawful Combatants Law in Israel for more than 600 days without charge.

While some detained health workers have been released, more than 80 remain in Israeli custody, alongside at least a dozen individuals arrested from the West Bank.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recorded more than 1,000 attacks on healthcare in Gaza since October 7, 2023, resulting in over 1,000 deaths and 1,700 injuries. Roughly 90 percent of Gaza’s health infrastructure has been destroyed or damaged. In August 2025, 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 1,000 attacks on healthcare since October 7, 2023, causing 42 deaths and at least 218 injuries.

Ambulances are frequently stopped at checkpoints with crews taken, while medics attempting to reach people injured in settler attacks face obstruction. Dialysis and oncology patients remain at home because checkpoints make the journey to treatment impossible, and healthcare workers continue to be 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, consistent with its clear and blatant disregard for Palestinian life.

The WMA Assembly should speak plainly about what is happening. It should publicly call for the release of detained Palestinian doctors, including Abu Safia, al-Rantisi, and Obeid, press for independent access to those still held, and back independent investigations into attacks on healthcare in Gaza and the West Bank with 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, and universally the founding proposition of the WMA: that membership carries an ethical responsibility that 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.

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