RAMALLAH: The growing numbers of Palestinian doctors and paramedics facing attack or detention is placing further strain on an already weakened healthcare system in the occupied West Bank, where severe funding shortfalls, medicine shortages and Israeli-imposed restrictions on movement limit access to treatment, an aid organization warned on Thursday.
Humanitarian and rights groups sounded the alarm after a series of attacks against medical personnel and facilities in recent days, amid a wider surge in Israeli settler violence across the territory.
Aseel Baidoun, deputy director of advocacy and communications in the West Bank at Medical Aid for Palestinians, said people in the territory were facing “an existential threat” as road closures, settler violence and military raids compounded the healthcare crisis.
“Medical care is no longer protected,” she told Arab News. “Doctors and nurses are being attacked and detained, while patients are struggling to reach clinics, and ambulances are being delayed by gates and checkpoints.”
Attacks targeting healthcare in the territory more than quadrupled from eight in June to 37 in July, the World Health Organization said. A total of 98 incidents were recorded between January and July, according to a report published last week.
On Tuesday, Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulance while it was carrying a patient from the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron. A paramedic who was in the ambulance said between 10 and 15 settlers surrounded the vehicle and pelted it with stones for up to 15 minutes while Israeli soldiers were nearby.
Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulance while transporting a patient in Hebron. “Targeting medical teams and obstructing their humanitarian work is a flagrant violation of International Humanitarian Law,” the PRCS said in a statement.… pic.twitter.com/swZraTbTn0
— Arab News (@arabnews) August 18, 2026
An Israeli soldier “told us that the only way forward was for an Israeli military jeep to drive in front of us, with our ambulance following very closely behind,” the paramedic said.
“I really want to continue saving lives but I also have to think about my family and my children. We have become accustomed to these situations but that does not mean they are normal. I have two sons and two daughters, and I think about them every time I go to work.”
Days earlier, a 27-year-old Palestinian nurse, Mohammed Nabil Al-Mutawwar, was paralyzed when he was shot in the back during a settler attack in his hometown of Sa’ir, northeast of Hebron.
In another incident, about 10 Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian doctor, Majed Alyan Dwayat, in Jannatah, east of Bethlehem, hitting him with stones, smashing his car windows and breaking his hand.
Healthcare workers also face detention as hospitals and medical facilities as subjected to military raids. Israeli forces on Tuesday detained Palestinian obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Dima Mohammed Amin Barakat after raiding her home in Ramallah. Medical Aid for Palestinians said her arrest followed the detention of Dr. Mazen Al-Rantisi, a Palestinian physician known for providing low-cost treatment to poorer patients.
Israeli forces also raided the Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation Hospital on Wednesday, prompting condemnation by the Palestinian Health Ministry.
It comes as the public healthcare system in the West Bank struggles under a severe financial crisis that has resulted in reduced services and shortages of medicines and surgical supplies.
Israel has completely suspended the transfer of clearance revenues — the taxes and customs duties it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo accords — since May 2025. Years of deductions from the revenues, especially after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel lead by Hamas, had already accumulated before the complete suspension of payments, and the amount withheld now stands at about $6 billion, the UN said.
This loss of the Palestinian Authority’s principal source of revenue has severely restricted its ability to pay public-sector employees and suppliers, and to maintain basic services, including healthcare.
Road closures, settler violence, the targeting of Palestinian healthcare workers and facilities, compounded by a financial crisis affecting the Palestinian Authority were impeding patients' access to medical services, rights groups warn (File/AFP)
The effects are felt directly in hospitals and clinics. In June, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported that 180 of the 520 drugs on its essential medicines list had reached the level of zero stock, including 50 of 97 cancer drugs, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The crisis has also forced cuts in medical services. Public hospitals have at times been restricted largely to emergency and life-saving care, while elective procedures have been postponed and government primary healthcare services reduced.
As of this month, about 75 percent of Palestinian Health Ministry service branches were operating only one or two days a week, according to Physicians for Human Rights Israel, while patients with chronic illnesses were increasingly struggling to obtain regular medication and treatment.
Restrictions on movement are making even these diminished services harder to obtain. The number of checkpoint closures and road gates have grown across the West Bank since the war in Gaza began in October 2023.
The WHO reported in March that ambulances and medical workers were being stopped and searched at checkpoints and forced to take longer, alternative routes to see their patients, significantly increasing response times. Nablus, Hebron, Jericho, Qalqilya and Ramallah were among the areas particularly badly affected.
On July 5, Israeli forces prevented the family of a Palestinian infant in Deir Ammar, west of Ramallah, from passing through a closed road gate for about 25 minutes, even though an ambulance was waiting on the other side, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The ambulance was forced to take a detour of about 40 kilometers to reach a Ramallah hospital, where the child was pronounced dead.
On July 27, an ambulance carrying a pregnant woman suffering severe bleeding was delayed by Israeli road closures and at the Awarta checkpoint near Nablus. She gave birth before reaching hospital and the baby died soon after, Human Rights Watch reported.
More than 900 checkpoints, gates, roadblocks and other physical obstacles are hindering delivery of aid to affected populations, and restricting the movement of Palestinians across the West Bank, according to the UN.
“Ambulances are regularly delayed access, which is bringing real hardship for both medical staff and patients trying to reach healthcare services,” said Baidoun from Medical Aid for Palestinians.
The mounting pressure on healthcare comes at the same time as an escalation in settler violence, accompanied by rapid settlement expansions across the West Bank that rights groups said were driving displacements of Palestinians.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has documented an average of 6.6 settler attacks resulting in casualties and property damage each day, a higher rate than in any previous year in which the agency has kept records.
Human Rights Watch warned on Thursday that escalating settler attacks were driving Palestinians from their homes amid “unprecedented” settlement expansion, and accused Israeli authorities of “arming, funding, and granting impunity” to the settlers.
Attacks by settlers have included shootings and other physical assaults, as well as the burning of homes and vehicles, thefts of livestock and destruction of agricultural land.
Sarah Sanbar, acting Israel and Palestine researcher at Human Rights Watch, said Israeli authorities were “not only failing to stop settler violence but actively enabling it.”
She added: “Settlers shoot, attack and expel Palestinians from their land, and the state provides the weapons, the legal cover and the budget to do it.”
For healthcare workers, the violence poses a threat both while they work and in other parts of their daily lives. Baidoun said attacks compounded the effects of medicine shortages, reduced services and movement restrictions, and were making it difficult for Palestinians to obtain even routine care.
“For example, if a patient has a chronic disease, or a woman is pregnant or has young children, the things they care about are healthcare, protection and security — and they have none of them,” she said.
She described the pressure on healthcare as another element in what Medical Aid for Palestinians considers a broader effort to create “unbearable living conditions” for Palestinians and force them from their land as part of a wider campaign of “ethnic cleansing.”
She added: “The key is to make people’s lives impossible.”
Human Rights Watch called on governments to increase the pressure on Israeli authorities over their policies in the West Bank, including through the use of targeted sanctions, restrictions on arms transfers, and a ban on trade with Israeli settlements.
