What’s behind Israel’s growing assault on West Bank healthcare
Mohammed Mutafer, a nurse, is treated by medics after Israeli settlers shot him and two other Palestinians during an attack on the town of Sa’ir, east of Hebron, 14 August 2026
Ghada Majadli writes in +972 on 24 August 2026:
For over two months, one of the most prominent Palestinian doctors in the West Bank has been languishing in Israeli prison. In a pre-dawn raid on June 21, Israeli soldiers arrested Dr. Mazen Rantisi at his home in the Al-Tireh neighborhood of Ramallah.
Known as the “doctor of the poor,” Rantisi had spent decades providing care to low-income and marginalized Palestinian communities — a service that has grown more essential in recent years, as Israel’s withholding of Palestinian Authority revenue has significantly reduced access to public healthcare. Like many Palestinian prisoners, Rantisi has faced medical neglect and physical abuse while in detention, prompting widespread concern among Palestinian health and civil society organizations.
Rantisi is also the chair of the board of the Health Work Committees (HWC), which makes his arrest and ongoing detention particularly significant. Founded in the 1980s, HWC emerged from a network of grassroots and popular committees that sought to provide basic services outside structures controlled by the Israeli occupation.
Healthcare was central to this form of popular resistance: The committees’ clinics focused especially on rural and underserved communities, where access to care was limited and Israeli policies of de-development had left essential infrastructure chronically vulnerable.