Attacks on Palestinians’ right to health are reaching “heights of impunity”, two UN special rapporteurs denounced on Thursday, after the Israeli raid on the Kamal Adwan hospital in Gaza and the arrest of its director.
“Israel’s blatant attack on the right to health in Gaza and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territories reaches new heights of impunity,” the experts said in a statement.
The rapporteur on the situation in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, who has repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza, and the rapporteur on the right to physical and mental health, Tlaleng Mofokeng, call for “an end to in blatant disregard for the right to health in Gaza, following last week’s raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital and the arbitrary arrest and detention of its director, Dr. Hossam Abou Safiya.
“We are horrified and concerned by the reports coming from the northern Gaza Strip and in particular by the attack on health workers, including the last of the 22 hospitals now destroyed: Kamal Adwan Hospital,” wrote the two experts, who are mandated by the United Nations Human Rights Council but do not speak on behalf of the UN.
They say they are “gravely concerned by the fate of Doctor Hossam Abou Safiya”, whose son they indicate was killed before his eyes, and demand his “immediate release” as well as that of “all other health workers arbitrarily detained” .
“This situation is part of an Israeli pattern aimed at continuously bombing, destroying and totally annihilating the realization of the right to health in Gaza,” they said.
According to the Israeli army, Kamal Adwan, which was the last major hospital still operational in the north of the Palestinian territory devastated by more than a year of war, served as a command center for Islamist Hamas fighters.
“It has been well documented that Hamas uses hospitals and medical centers for its activities,” the Israeli army told AFP, when asked about the rapporteurs’ press release.
More than 1,057 health professionals have been killed since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas against Israel, underline the rapporteurs, citing data from the Ministry of Health of the government of Palestinian Islamist movement.
For his part, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, deplored Thursday on X the “terribly slow” pace of medical evacuations from Gaza.
“Only 5,383 patients have been evacuated with WHO support since October 2023, including only 436 since the closure of the Rafah crossing point” in May 2024, he indicated: at this rate, “it will take five to ten years” to evacuate the “more than 12,000 people” who still need it.
