On 6 October, the Israeli military issued threats in a video statement, claiming that “Hamas continues to exploit civilian centres and infrastructure for its terrorist purposes, especially hospitals and medical facilities”, but provided no evidence to support these allegations.
Over the past few days, the Israeli military published six messages inciting against hospitals and medical centres in Gaza.
Accusations:
- It claimed to have tracked two people allegedly affiliated with Hamas leaving Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip.
- According to the military, one of them transferred explosive devices from inside the hospital and planted them near the so-called ‘Yellow Line’ to target its forces.
No Evidence:
- According to Euro-Med Monitor, the published footage does not provide enough evidence to substantiate the military’s account.
- It neither identifies the location of the person shown near the rubble or
- his connection to Kamal Adwan Hospital,
- nor shows him leaving the hospital or carrying devices out of it.
- The image quality also makes it impossible to verify what he is handling or to conclude definitively that he is planting an explosive device.
The footage then cuts to a daytime shot of an unidentified destroyed building, without showing its location or establishing a connection to the previous clip.
Conclusion:
These spatial and temporal gaps prevent the combined footage from serving as evidence that the person left the hospital or that the alleged devices were transferred from inside it, the human rights monitor added.
On Wednesday, the Palestinian Health Ministry also warned that Israel is once again promoting allegations about the presence of weapons inside hospitals to justify targeting what remains of the healthcare system in the Palestinian enclave after three years since the start of Israel’s genocidal war.
The Israeli military is once again making a series of “false and misleading claims through its spokespeople, alleging that armed fighters are present or weapons are stored inside hospitals and healthcare facilities,” Khalil al-Daqran, the Ministry spokesman, said during a news conference.
He categorically rejected the allegations, saying their renewed promotion was “nothing more than the fabrication of false justifications to pave the way for further undermining and destroying the remaining healthcare capabilities.”
“What remains inside hospitals and medical centers still operating are only patients fighting for their lives, alongside medical and humanitarian personnel working with minimal resources under exceptionally harsh conditions,” he said.
Daqran noted that the health sector was suffering from severe shortages of medicines, medical consumables and other supplies needed to provide healthcare.
The spokesman stressed that hospitals and healthcare facilities in Gaza “have always kept their doors open, without exception, to international organizations and UN, human rights and humanitarian institutions” so they could examine their operations and verify Israeli allegations.
He called on the international community, as well as UN and human rights organizations, to intervene “urgently and immediately” to halt Israeli attacks and provide direct international protection for medical personnel, healthcare institutions and the remaining facilities providing treatment.
Euro-Med Monitor noted that the escalating official and media campaign of Israeli incitement against hospitals and medical centres in the Gaza Strip is paving the way for attacks on the healthcare facilities that remain.
“It seeks to deprive Palestinians of any chance of survival and to continue subjecting them to living conditions that lead to their destruction.”
“Using unsubstantiated claims to justify such attacks, after three years of systematically destroying the healthcare system, signals an insistence on continuing the genocide by preventing the restoration of services essential to people’s survival and eliminating the capacity to save the wounded and treat patients.”
The monitor listed two steps for the Israeli approch since the beginning of the genocide: pre-emptively attacking hospitals while making undocumented accusations linking them to military activity. It then uses those accusations as a pretext to bomb, raid, and disable hospitals, presenting the systematic destruction of healthcare as operations against military targets, even as the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip can no longer withstand further attacks or disruption.
Euro-Med Monitor warned that threats could disrupt these facilities even before an attack, by blocking patients and wounded people from reaching them, impeding the movement of medical teams, ambulances, and supplies, or prompting facilities to suspend some services for fear of being targeted.
“This could interrupt treatment, delay lifesaving interventions, raise the risk of preventable deaths, and further deprive people of care essential to their survival,” the monitor said.
Israel’s threat to target hospitals in Gaza may signal a broader assault, aimed primarily at escalating killings and forced displacement, both of which have continued despite the ceasefire announced in October 2025.
Since the announcement, Israel has killed more than 1,470 Palestinians and injured thousands more, bringing the genocide’s toll to more than 74,200 killed and 175,000 injured. This has coincided with Israel expanding its military control to more than 65 per cent of the enclave’s total area.
More than 2.1 million Palestinians, most of them displaced, are entering their fourth year under direct attack and systematic starvation, confined to a narrow area in the west that covers no more than 35 per cent of the Gaza Strip.
“Despite this catastrophic reality, Israeli officials continue to openly call for maintaining the blockade and depriving the population of life’s necessities in order to ultimately remove them in an explicit entrenchment of genocide,” Euro-Med Monitor said.
Gaza’s Deteriorating Healthcare System
Israel’s genocide has already caused immense damage to Gaza’s healthcare sector, with Israeli bombing since October 7, 2023 destroying 38 hospitals and 96 primary healthcare centres or rendering them inoperable, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
After three years, 94 percent are fully or partially out of service, leaving patients without essential care, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Only 42 of 666 facilities are still functioning.
It has killed more than 1,700 healthcare workers over the past three years, including doctors, nurses, and other health workers, and detained more than 330 others, 81 of whom remain in detention.
Several detainees have died under torture, most notably Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, one of Gaza’s most prominent orthopaedic surgeons. Detained at Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, he was killed in an Israeli prison in April 2024 after four months of torture before was raped to death.
Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, hospitals must not be attacked, and international humanitarian law gives medical units and personnel special protection. Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, intentionally attacking a hospital is a war crime.
“The Israeli occupation has deliberately and methodically destroyed the health system,” Gaza Ministry of Health spokesperson Zaher al-Wahidi said.
He outlined five key challenges the health system is facing after 28 months of blockade, bombardment and mass killings, which have not stopped after the US-brokered ceasefire came into force in October: near absence of patient evacuations, lack of medical equipment, shortage of medication, destruction of facilities and need for medical workers.
So, beyond equipment and doctors, the physical medical buildings in Gaza have also been severely damaged.
The Health Ministry’s al-Wahidi said the medical system in the territory served as a “safety valve” for the people throughout the war.
“In any area, people were finding safety in the functioning hospitals. The medical workers would remain until the last minute in the hospitals until they are forcibly removed or detained by Israeli forces,” he told Al Jazeera.
“So, attacking the hospitals and raiding them was a recipe for displacing people. The resilience of the hospitals became the resilience of the people. As long as the hospitals remained standing, the people remained in their land."
Israel’s Attacks on Hospitals
Human rights groups and United Nations-backed experts have confirmed that Israel has been systematically destroying Gaza’s healthcare system.
The Israeli army and Shin Bet internal intelligence agency have repeatedly claimed, without providing evidence, that they had targeted a Hamas “command and control complex” within the hospitals.
Andrew Cayley, who was leading the International Criminal Court (ICC) Palestine investigation, had questioned the reliability of claims about Hamas’s military activity in Gaza’s hospitals which have been made to justify Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities in the war-torn enclave.
Cayley said the ICC faced “great difficulty assessing” the level of Hamas fighters presence in hospitals “because clearly there are lies being spoken, but that is really something we do need to get to the bottom of as a prosecution office”.
He added: “I think that has been grossly exaggerated, but we need to be able to demonstrate very clearly what the level of military presence was, if at all, in these hospitals because I think we’ve been misled about that in the press.”
Hospitals, as well as medical infrastructure and personnel, have specific protections under international humanitarian law. Attacks against them are prohibited.
Here’s a list of some of the major attacks on healthcare in Gaza since October 2023:
October 17, 2023
Hundreds of people sheltering in the car park of al-Ahli Hospital were killed in an Israeli attack, according to Palestinian health officials. In the days leading up to the attack, the hospital director reportedly received warnings from Israel. Israel claimed that the explosion at the facility was a misfired rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an allegation strongly denied by the resistance group.
November 3, 2023
An ambulance convoy was destroyed by an Israeli air attack outside al-Shifa Hospital, killing many Palestinians.
November 21, 2023
An air raid on al-Awda Hospital killed Dr. Mahmoud Abu Nujaila and Dr. Ahmad al-Sahar of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and another doctor, Ziad al-Tatari.
March 20, 2024
The Israeli military said it killed 90 people in its raid on al-Shifa Hospital during a siege as displaced Palestinians sheltering in the facility described long detentions and abuse.
March 31, 2024
Many people were killed and injured in an air raid on the yard of Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, just outside the emergency room where many internally displaced people were sheltering.
April 1, 2024
A 14-day siege of al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in the enclave, by Israeli forces saw hundreds of people killed, including medical staff, and mass arrests of its staff and others.
October 14, 2024
An Israeli air attack on Al-Aqsa Hospital killed five people and wounded 65. Tents of displaced people caught fire while people were sleeping.
December 28, 2024
The Israeli forces arrested Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, after refusing to follow orders to abandon one of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza. His arrest came a day after the military killed approximately 20 Palestinians in a raid inside the hospital, which was one of the “largest operations” conducted in the territory until that time.
November 2023
Israeli forces laid siege to the Indonesia Hospital in Beit Lahiya for days. The Israeli forces left the hospital in ruins, with charred and decomposing bodies piling up in corners.
January 4, 2025
The Indonesian Hospital in north Gaza was put out of service following repeated attacks by Israeli forces, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
March 23, 2025
Israeli forces shot 15 Palestinian medics, working for the Palestine Red Crescent Society, dead during a rescue mission in Rafah’s Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood. A video recovered from the mobile phone of one of the killed Palestinian medics showed Israeli forces’ involvement, igniting widespread outrage.
