Human rights groups petition Israel’s High Court to let sick Gazans be evacuated to West Bank
The devastated area around Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital
Chen Maanit reports in Haaretz on 20 November 2025:
Five human rights organizations have petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice on Thursday, asking it to order the state to resume evacuating patients from Gaza to hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel halted the transfer of patients from Gaza to the West Bank and East Jerusalem after October 7, 2023 – a practice it had permitted previously. Since then, it has approved the evacuation of only a small number of patients and wounded individuals to third countries such as Egypt and Turkey.
According to the petitioners, Physicians for Human Rights–Israel, Gisha, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and HaMoked, Israel is violating its obligations under both Israeli and international law to protect the lives of Palestinians in Gaza who are under its effective control, and to take action to prevent unnecessary loss of life.
The groups argue that because Israel exercises complete control over the movement of patients out of the enclave, it is obligated to allow the transfer of those in need of urgent medical care. “This is not a political or security decision, but a basic duty to save lives,” the petitioners wrote. “The suffering, severe injuries and deaths of patients in Gaza are not a matter of fate and the direct result of a policy that could be changed immediately.”
Citing data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Health Ministry and the World Health Organization, the petitioners describe the near-collapse of Gaza’s health system. They note that two-thirds of the 647 health facilities that operated in the Strip before the war are now out of service, and only three hospitals are functioning at full capacity.
According to the petition, the number of hospital beds for Gaza’s two million residents has dropped from 3,500 to 1,952. It further states that 16,500 Palestinians in Gaza are at risk of death because the medical treatments they require are no longer available. Essential services, including chemotherapy, intensive care, pediatric care, advanced imaging and oncological surgery, are almost entirely inaccessible. Furthermore, an estimated 11,000 cancer patients have been left without medication.
To reflect the dire health situation in Gaza, the petition recounts the stories of several patients awaiting treatment, among them R., a 2-year-old boy with acute leukemia; Y., a 9-year-old with lymphoma; A., a 66-year-old woman with breast cancer and A., a 37-year-old woman in need of urgent treatment for bowel cancer.
The petition also argues that, beyond the collapse of Gaza’s health services, the harsh living conditions faced by hundreds of thousands of people, including the spread of infectious diseases, pose a severe risk to the lives of sick and injured individuals who remain in the Strip.
Since the closure of the Rafah border crossing, evacuations to third countries have become nearly impossible. Numbers in recent months have been extremely low, often just a few dozen per month. The petitioners add that the long journeys required to reach third countries frequently worsen patients’ conditions and, in many cases, lead to their deaths.
The petition is supported by testimony from physicians, including Dr. Keren Levanon, a senior medical oncologist who volunteers with Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, and Professor Jeffrey Goldhagen, president of the International Society for Social Pediatrics and Child Health.
According to Goldhagen, thousands of children in Gaza are at risk of death, urgently needing medical care that simply does not exist in the Strip. “Their deaths are preventable,” he says.
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