Israel’s arrest of Ramallah’s ‘doctor of the poor’ shows Palestinians that no one is safe
Dr. Mazen Al-Rantisi
Mondoweiss reports on 12 August 2026:
Before dawn on June 21, Israeli forces raided the al-Tireh neighborhood in the heart of Ramallah, storming the home of Dr. Mazen Rantisi, 71. His arrest by the Israeli military made headlines across the West Bank.
A renowned and respected figure, the physician is known for decades of service that earned him the nickname “doctor of the poor” for his well-known policy of waiving fees for patients who couldn’t pay. As a community figure with no history of political activity, Dr. Rantisi was the last person Palestinians expected Israel to arrest. His arrest was a clear signal that no one would be spared from Israel’s assault on Palestinian existence in the West Bank. For many, Rantisi’s arrest was proof that the nature of the Israeli crackdown was not against specific groups or individuals, but the very fabric of Palestinian society itself.
Last Sunday, Rantisi’s case returned to the forefront of the news after Haaretz‘s Amira Hass reported on Rantisi’s detention in inhumane conditions and how he was subjected to mistreatment, food deprivation, and medical neglect, as relayed by Rantisi to the lawyer for the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. According to Rantisi’s family, the doctor, who suffers from several chronic illnesses, has been denied his medications, putting his health at risk.
Such reports have become commonplace ever since October 2023, when torture, starvation, and ill-treatment became a matter of policy in Israeli prisons. But Mazen Rantisi’s case is particularly concerning for Palestinian social workers, because of what his arrest represented.
Dr. Rantisi is facing charges of heading the board of the Union of Health Work Committees (UHWC), a Palestinian medical NGO founded in the 1980s that Israel declared a “terrorist” organization and outlawed in August 2022, as part of Israel’s broader crackdown on Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations
‘Younger detainees tried to protect my father with their bodies’
Sylvia Rantisi, Dr. Rantisi’s daughter, was in Jordan, where she and her family live, when she received the news of her father’s arrest in June. “I immediately came back to Ramallah, as did my sister, to be with my mother, who was alone in the house after my father was arrested,” Sylvia told Mondoweiss. “This is the first time that our family has had to face an arrest by the occupation. My father had never had any trouble with the occupation before, and at his age, we never expected him to be arrested. We weren’t ready for it.”