The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns in the strongest terms the Israeli Occupation Forces’ (IOF) blowing up and destroying the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, Gaza’s only cancer hospital.
PCHR believes that Israel’s deliberate and heinous destruction of the hospital is a stark violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
This crime also falls under acts criminalized by Article II of the Genocide Convention, particularly Paragraph (C), which provides the deliberate infliction of life conditions on a group calculated to bring about its partial or whole physical destruction.
PCHR emphasizes that IOF’s destruction of the hospital has completely shattered any future for Gaza’s cancer patients to have treatment.
This has also undermined years of efforts to establish a specialized medical facility for around 12500 cancer patients in the Gaza Strip, deepening the crisis for the already crumpling healthcare system amid acute shortages of medicine and medical supplies and the ongoing closure of crossings that has deprived patients of travel for treatment abroad.
On the afternoon of Friday, 21 March 2025,1 the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced IOF’s destruction of the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital following a video2 published on social media showing the blowing up and destruction of the hospital’s buildings in central Gaza Strip near the Netzarim axis.
The hospital covered an area of 33,400 square meters and consisted of eight buildings. It houses four major operating rooms, intensive care units and advanced medical equipment, including MRI and CT scanners and a kidney stone fragmentation device, in addition to a central laboratory, and 180 patient rooms with a total capacity of 272 beds. The hospital staff is comprised of 248 health professionals and provides services for more than 12,000 cancer patients, with the hospital being their sole hope for treatment.
Over 17 months of genocide, IOF’s attacks have systematically and deliberately targeted hospitals. These attacks have inflicted massive destruction to the healthcare system and led to its collapse, becoming unable to provide healthcare services to patients and individuals injured during the Israeli aggression. The Turkish- Palestinian Friendship Hospital had been deliberately targeted by IOF, forcing it to go out of service in November 2023 while in mid-2024 IOF has turned it into a military barrack for its soldiers. By this, cancer patients have been denied during the aggression from having their treatment for prolonged and repeated periods, exacerbating their health conditions and leading to the deaths of 500 cancer patients, who have lived in dire conditions and left without even the minimum medical care services.
PCHR emphasizes that hospitals and healthcare centers which provide medical care for patients enjoy a special protection under Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which obligates the parties to the conflict to protect these medical facilities at all times.
PCHR believes that this criminal act by IOF, the blowing up of the hospital, constitutes a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of ICC, which prohibits directing military attacks against hospitals providing medical care for patients. Such heinous act also falls under a broader crime of inflicting the maximum physical and psychological harm to the population of the Gaza Strip.
PCHR denounces the international community’s silence and failure to stop the ongoing Israeli violations of the international law amid Israel’s resumption of mass killings against civilians in the Gaza Strip and its ongoing policy of house demolitions on top of residents as well as the continuous targeting of shelters, relentless displacement orders and closure of crossings that deprives patients of travel for treatment abroad. Thus, PCHR calls upon:
- The international community to exert pressure on the Israeli occupation authorities to stop their genocidal war against the Gaza Strip and cease attacks on hospitals and healthcare centers, being civilian objects that must be protected at all times.
- The High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to compel Israel to fulfil its legal obligations as an occupying power in the Gaza Strip by ensuring provision of medical supplies to the Gaza’s population in accordance with Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, including guaranteeing cancer patients’ access to medicines, treatment and medical supplies and allowing the entry of field hospitals.
- The international community to pressure Israel to open immediately all crossings and allow cancer patients to travel under an effective mechanism that ensures their prompt access to life-saving treatment.
- The International Criminal Court and UN Commissions of Inquiry to investigate these crimes and bring the Israeli war criminals to justice before international courts.
- Palestinian Ministry of Health, press statement on 21 March 2025: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15uzXhgF7P/ ↩︎
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