Physicians for Human Rights Israel

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Physicians for Human Rights Israel

PHRI, a non-governmental organization, stands at the forefront of the struggle for human rights & the right to health in particular, in Israel & the oPt.

Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), a non-governmental organization, stands at the forefront of the struggle for human rights and the right to health in particular, in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory. Founded in 1988 by a group of Israeli physicians led by Dr. Ruchama Marton, PHRI works to promote a just society where the right to health is granted equally to all people for whom Israel is responsible: Israeli citizens, persons without civil status, Palestinians in the oPt, migrants and refugees and prisoners. Based on principles of human rights, medical ethics, and social justice, PHRI combines humanitarian aid with advocacy, aiming to change abusive and discriminatory policies. PHRI operates an Open Clinic for migrants and refugees, and a mobile clinics for Palestinians in the oPt, where hundreds of volunteer health professionals provide medical care for people with limited or no access to healthcare. At the same time our staff receive appeals from individuals whose right to health has been violated, and advocate for change to remedy the situation. Each year we serve more than 20,000 people by providing medical care or assistance in accessing the right to health. PHRI is supported by more than 3,500 members and volunteers from different health and medical professions. Basic in our perception is the understanding that the medical community is sometimes complicit–passively or actively–in oppressive practices that undermine equality and health. Thus it is vital that in all their actions, health professionals refuse to be obedient bureaucrats of a policy that increases inequality and structural violence. They should seek to establish an alternative that does not rely on hatred or a hierarchy of privilege but rather on true equality and solidarity. From its first day PHRI views the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territory as a root cause of multiple human rights violations including the right to health, and actively advocates for its end. Address: 9 Dror Street, Tel Aviv-Jaffa 6813509
Tel: +972-(0)3-5133100
Fax: +972-(0)3-6873029
Email: [email protected]
Website: phr.org.il/en
Registered Organization No. 580142214

08/10/2026

One year since a ceasefire agreement in Gaza was announced, PHRI is releasing a new paper exposing Israel’s continued actions and policies preventing any meaningful recovery of Gaza’s healthcare system.
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We continue to monitor shortages of medical supplies, diagnostics, and treatment, along with limited medical evacuations for critical patients in need of lifesaving treatment. PHRI has followed more than a dozen cases of children who died while awaiting medical evacuation, as Israel blocks the medical corridor between Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
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The situation on the ground speaks for itself: on October 2, Nasser Medical Complex ran out of syringes.
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Yet raw aid volume and truck counts are misleading metrics. What matters is whether Palestinians in Gaza have access to the conditions necessary to sustain a healthy and dignified life. One year into the ceasefire, the continued destruction and denial of these conditions, in the absence of accountability, means Israel’s genocide in Gaza persists.
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We demand that Israeli authorities reopen the medical corridor, lift restrictions on medicines, medical equipment and humanitarian personnel, and allow the meaningful reconstruction of Gaza’s healthcare system.
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🔗Link to the full report in the comments.
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Photo: Yousef Zaanoun, Activestills

29/09/2026

Earlier this month, our Mobile Clinic held a special medical field day in the Tulkarem area, alongside a clinic providing kidney failure treatment.
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From the early morning hours, hundreds of residents arrived to receive medical care and medications, including kidney patients undergoing dialysis treatment at Tulkarem Government Hospital.
In total, our team treated 612 patients, including 39 children, while dozens more came to receive medication — making this one of our busiest field days on record.
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Throughout the day, patients described the severe crisis facing the local healthcare system, acute shortages of medication, and growing difficulties accessing care amid the economic crisis and ongoing movement restrictions.
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The unusually high number of residents seeking care reflects the scale of medical need in the area and highlights how access to even basic healthcare can no longer be taken for granted.
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Our Mobile Clinic continues to provide treatment and medications as settler violence, expanding checkpoints, and a deepening crisis in the Palestinian healthcare system make access to care increasingly difficult.

28/09/2026

“I saw how displacement can affect almost every aspect of a person’s life”.

NEW podcast episode 🎙️

Every year, PHRI’s Open Clinic for Status-less Individuals in Jaffa assists some 1,500 people who share one thing: they live in Israel yet aren’t Israeli citizens or residents, and therefore cannot access the country’s public healthcare system. Beyond that shared experience, their backgrounds and life stories vary widely: they come from dozens of countries and cultures, and their migration paths differ. Many of them are asylum seekers who cannot return home, where their lives might be at risk. For some, home is on the other side of the planet, while for others, it’s a few dozen kilometers away.

“Sometimes I meet people who are afraid to come out of the shadows and seek help. I remember a Palestinian woman who gave birth… at home, not by choice, but because going to a hospital felt dangerous”.

Join PHRI’s Lubov Borshevsky and Lee Caspi for a conversation about the intersecting vulnerabilities faced by migrants and what life is like away from social and legal support networks. In this episode, we will also explore some of Lubov’s personal circumstances and how she, originally from Ukraine, found herself working with these communities in Israel while war rages back home in Kyiv.

Link to the episode in the comments.

22/09/2026

We stand in pain and solidarity with Dr. Munir al-Bursh and his family during this difficult time, following an Israeli strike that killed his eldest son, Basir al-Bursh, on Saturday.
An Israeli drone reportedly struck Basir as he left his family’s tent in the Al-Zahra neighborhood, west of Jabalia refugee camp. Medics and family members said the strike killed Basir and seriously wounded another.
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Like most of the population, Dr. al-Bursh’s family has been forcibly displaced time and again, living in makeshift shelters, throughout Israel’s genocidal campaign, which destroyed their home. In December 2023, Israeli forces killed Dr. al-Bursh’s 13-year-old daughter, Jinan, and wounded him.
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Basir’s killing is a stark reminder that the Israeli military has not ceased its attacks across Gaza, continuing to to kill and take the lives of Palestinian women, men, and children. According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, since October 11, 2025, Israeli forces killed 1,390 Palestinians and injured 4,801 others.
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Alongside dedicated doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers, Dr. Munir al-Bursh, Director-General of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, has been at the forefront of efforts to sustain Gaza’s healthcare system under conditions of immense destruction and deprivation. We have been in contact with Dr. al-Bursh for years, including until October 2023 coordinating visits by PHRI healthcare worker delegations to meet their colleagues in Gaza. Through his regular reports, Dr. al-Bursh provides vital, up-to-date information on the state of Gaza’s healthcare system: the ongoing shortages of medicines and medical supplies, and the thousands of patients waiting for urgent care that remains unavailable in Gaza. Israel’s restrictions on essential supplies and lack of access to the resources needed for reconstruction continue to prevent the genuine rehabilitation of Gaza’s healthcare system.
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We stand with Dr. al-Bursh during this difficult time, and we continue to stand with Palestinian healthcare workers in Gaza and support their efforts to restore and rebuild an integrated, fully functioning Palestinian healthcare system.
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Use of the photo is made in accordance with Section 27A of the Copyright Law.

10/09/2026

After six months of repeated appeals to the Israel Prison Service (IPS), R., a prisoner with a hearing disability whose case we have been handling, finally received batteries for his hearing aid two weeks ago.

His family was informed and, for a moment, felt relieved. But that relief was short-lived. The batteries last less than two weeks, and there is no assurance that they will be replaced when they run out — particularly given the IPS’s routine restrictions on Palestinian prisoners’ ability to access medical equipment and other essential supplies.

With family visits banned and lawyer visits costly and difficult to arrange, R.’s family will once again be left in the dark, not knowing whether he will continue to hear or once again be cut off from the world around him.

Hearing is particularly critical for incarcerated people. During roll call, for example, prisoners are forced to kneel with their heads bowed toward the floor. Looking up can expose them to beatings by prison guards. In this environment, hearing becomes a tool for survival, allowing prisoners to remain aware of what is happening around them. Over the past two years, we have handled several cases in which prisoners with hearing impairments were ordered to stand but, unable to hear the command, remained in place.

R.’s case is not exceptional. PHRI’s Prisoners Department has documented numerous cases of detainees entering prison without the basic medical equipment and supplies on which they depend. These have included splints for people with nerve damage; eyeglasses needed by hundreds of prisoners; a prosthetic eye for a journalist whose eye had been removed; and protective sunglasses for an elderly blind prisoner to prevent dust from entering his eyes.

The IPS largely ignores our appeals, as well as those submitted by Palestinian prisoners’ lawyers, to allow the entry of basic supplies such as eyeglasses. When we do obtain a response, it usually amounts to a statement that the prisoner has undergone an eye examination. Yet this offers little reassurance given the bureaucratic catch-22 that follows: under the IPS’s “procedures for procuring medical devices,” payment must be made before the glasses can be provided — yet at present, there is no way to make such a payment.

Every step toward the goal becomes part of a frustrating Sisyphean ordeal that leads only to continued abuse. We push the boulder of bureaucracy up the hill, only to watch it roll back down to the same absurd starting point: a prisoner left with broken glasses on his face.

02/09/2026

UPDATE 🚨
Dr. Abu Safiya: “Prison Guards Continue to Beat Me and Threaten Me to Keep Silent”

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the Gaza Strip, who has been held by Israel without charge or trial since December 2024, reported in recent testimony that prison guards continue to abuse him.

Abu Safiya told his attorney, who visited him on Sunday (August 30), that prison guards continue to assault him, punching and kicking him and beating him with batons across his body, including sensitive areas. He also reported being deliberately deprived of sleep through persistent noise and loudspeakers used throughout the night. According to Abu Safiya, he was assaulted following his previous attorney visit and warned not to speak about the conditions of his detention.

His testimony comes as we pursue legal proceedings demanding that an independent physician to be permitted to examine him. The initial request was submitted to the Israel Prison Service on July 7 but has yet to be approved.

At the same time, our central demand remains unchanged: the release of the 14 physicians from Gaza, including Dr. Abu Safiya, so that they can reunite with their families and resume their medical duties.

01/09/2026

This month, our Prisoners and Detainees Department was contacted by Haider, the partner of a 55-year-old Palestinian physician who had recently been arrested. He was terrified. Just hours after her arrest, she had been brought to a hospital for an urgent medical procedure, only to be returned to detention shortly afterward.

This was not an isolated incident, but part of a broader and deeply concerning pattern of premature discharge from hospitals. We continue to receive reports of detained persons being brought to public hospitals for urgent medical care, only to be released before receiving the full, often lifesaving treatment they require. Still suffering from open wounds or requiring medical monitoring and further treatment, they are placed in prisoner transport vehicles and taken back to detention facilities — facing humiliation and severe violence along the way.

Such cases are no coincidence. They reflect ongoing systemic failures in which extraneous considerations, improper political directives, and hostile public sentiment routinely override ethical and medical obligations.

A new position paper we are publishing today, authored by Dr. Merav Amir, Dr. Hagar Kotef, and Dr. Guy Shalev, examines this reality in depth. The paper documents ethical breaches and failures in the treatment of Palestinian detainees in Israeli hospitals between October 2023 and September 2025.

Drawing on testimonies from physicians within Israel’s public health system and other verified sources, it exposes a series of severe ethical violations, including denial of care, substandard medical treatment, treating patients while physically restrained, returning detainees to facilities where they may have faced torture, and failing to keep their families informed.

The paper holds up a deeply troubling mirror to Israel’s healthcare system and reminds us that the principles of universal medical ethics were created precisely for moments of crisis — when duties toward patients come into conflict with the prevailing public climate.

🔗Read the full position paper in the comments.

23/08/2026

🎧 New Podcast Episode

“The system tells you... You can be Arab... but you need to be... “good Arabs”. The Arabs that do manage to build a career and get to a more senior position... need to be fine with the flag and the soldiers and the magnifying glass they’re constantly under. You need to accept that because you’re Palestinian, your career development will be more difficult, and you shouldn’t complain about it.”

On August 9th, allegations emerged against Rambam Hospital (Haifa), where four Israeli soldiers who had been wounded in Lebanon were admitted for treatment. One of the soldiers was in serious condition, and his family alleged that he had been “locked overnight” in a room with “only Arabic-speaking staff”, where he was mistreated.

This incident – where racist allegations accused Palestinian medical staff in an Israeli hospital of being “disloyal” and untrustworthy – is the tip of the iceberg, representing a far wider, more pervasive reality of silencing and persecution.

Join PHRI’s Shani Bar-Tuvia and Lee Caspi for a conversation about this libelous incident, the response it met in the Israeli healthcare system, the public, and the media, and the much wider phenomenon it represents. In this episode, we delve into the daily experience of thousands of Palestinian medical workers in Israeli institutions, who are forced to lead their professional lives under a microscope. A reality where any perceived or real step outside the lines of what they are permitted to say, feel, and be, might damage their careers and professional prospects.

🔗 Link to the episode in the comments.

17/08/2026

My first month as executive director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel—and the preceding year and a half as Deputy Director of Programs—taught me about the broken and the whole, the fracture and the healing, in our work.

We operate in a state whose military and civil arms are invested in oppressing the Palestinian people, while much of Jewish society actively participates, condones it, or looks away. Against this backdrop lies a futile effort to carve out a 'democratic' sphere—where rights and equality can supposedly be debated—distinct from a sphere ruled by the logic of destruction and genocide.

Fragmentation runs deep. It is evident in the shattering of Palestinian space and the fracturing of their healthcare system, devastating a population that needs and is entitled to its medical institutions. It also manifests in the proliferation of legal "statuses" imposed on Palestinians, enabling the incarceration of thousands, including healthcare workers, without charge, while normalizing torture camps.

Fractures are widening within Israel proper as well. The state’s retreat from providing health insurance to all children without status builds a wall between kids in the very same preschool—some granted coverage and others stripped of that basic right based solely on their parents' origin. And under the same healthcare system, residents of neighboring towns receive starkly unequal medical care, both in quantity and quality, driven by structural disparities related to nationality and socioeconomic status.

The broken is in spatial fragmentation and in divide-and-conquer strategies that isolate issues and communities from one another.

And PHRI’s mission is to restore the whole. It begins with recognizing that what happens anywhere in this space impacts the space as a whole. It means bridging the gap between a child with status and one without, and resisting the endless splintering of the Palestinian health system. Ultimately, our mission lies in insisting on a unified, continuous, and connected existence that fosters true solidarity and mutual responsibility.

I could not have wished for a finer community to lead alongside—from our staff and board, to volunteers from across the health sector and beyond, to supporters who make our work possible.

Together, we hold the complete picture, of the broken and the whole.

Striving for wholeness also means extending grace to one another across the PHRI community. Such grace allows us to navigate the devastating chasm between today's brokenness and a glimmer of wholeness and hold fast to its possibility—a reality in which supremacy is dismantled, justice is served, full individual and collective equality is practiced, and historical injustice is righted.

11/08/2026

The racist slander against ICU staff at Rambam Hospital is the latest example of the unprecedented violence, discrimination, and racism that Palestinian healthcare workers in Israel have faced over the past three years.
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In response to this attack, which quickly escalated into broader incitement against Palestinians working in Israel’s healthcare system, we urge Israel’s Ministry of Health, Rambam Hospital management, and medical associations to issue a clear, unequivocal, and public statement of support.
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This is especially critical in light of our recent report documenting the silencing and suppression of Palestinian healthcare workers in Israel, as well as recent studies showing that, even three years after October 2023, Palestinian healthcare workers continue to experience a diminished sense of belonging and safety, alongside heightened exposure to racism, discrimination, and hostility from both colleagues and patients.
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A firm response to this incident is essential, alongside long-term measures to protect healthcare workers and ensure a healthcare system that is fair, safe, and respectful for all.

Address

9 Dror Street
Jaffa-Tel Aviv
68135

Telephone

+97235133100

Website

http://www.phr.org.il/en

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