Let Gaza City's Hospitals Stay Put, Stay Open, and Stay Safe

Illustrative. Destruction in Shejayia, Gaza City. Photo: © Taitharris | Dreamstime.com

ACRI, together with Physicians for Human Rights, and HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual, petitioned the Supreme Court on September 25, 2025, demanding that the three remaining functioning hospitals in Gaza City be exempt from the evacuation orders given to the city’s residents, that they be protected from military attacks, and that they be allowed to continue to function. The petition also demands that the hospitals be supplied with fuel, food, medical equipment, and assistance in coordination with the army, and that they be accessible via access routes through humanitarian corridors. 

The petition argues that the evacuation orders directed at the entire population of Gaza City, together with the sweeping attacks that do not spare humanitarian and medical institutions, leave the city's most vulnerable residents who need medical treatment essentially helpless, without the ability to evacuate and without a safe place to evacuate to. Premature infants, babies, and adult patients dependent on ventilators; pregnant and birthing women; people with disabilities; people suffering from malnutrition; and the thousands of wounded in serious condition may not survive if they are forced to evacuate from the hospitals. 

The petition also includes testimonies from doctors and data from the UN and aid organizations about the collapse of the healthcare system in Gaza more broadly. The few hospitals that remain in operation in Gaza as a whole are operating at hundreds of percent over capacity, with severe shortages in staffing and equipment.  All of the buildings themselves have sustained damage in the war.  

Impeding the ability of the remaining hospitals in Gaza City to function at this point in time is a serious violation of a fundamental principle in international humanitarian law and human rights law: access to medical treatment must be provided, even for enemy nationals, in order to protect human life and health as much as possible, and to prevent unnecessary suffering as much as possible even under the harshest conditions of war. 

HCJ 67739-09-25 Physicians for Human Rights - Israel v. Minister of Defense  

Attorneys: Reut Shaer, Tal Hassin  

The Petition, September 25, 2025 (Heb)

We have not forgotten: 🛑 Stop the killing and starvation in Gaza 🛑 Stop the abandonment of the hostages 🛑 End the war. Now.