The Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) blew up the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in central Gaza on 20 March 2025, demonstrating further evidence of Al-Haq’s previous analysis that Israel is engaging in a systematic pattern of genocide in the destruction of Gaza’s entire healthcare system. A video posted online shows the hospital and an adjacent medical school blown up in a controlled demolition, followed by the sounds of a soldier cheering. It was the only hospital dedicated to cancer treatment in the entire Gaza Strip.
The IOF previously used the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital as a military base throughout the course of its occupation of the so-called “Netzarim Corridor,” violating the hospital’s protected status. Al-Haq reiterates that medical establishments, such as hospitals and clinics, and medical units, such as ambulances and rescue vehicles, must be respected and protected at all times and under all circumstances.[1] By blowing up the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital following 17 months of a systematic pattern of genocide and destruction of the entire healthcare system in the Gaza Strip, Israel is further rendering Gaza unlivable and preventing cancer patients from accessing dire treatment.
The detonation of the Turkish-Palestinian friendship hospital, demonstrates Israel’s brazen impunity and dedication to destroying every single hospital in the Gaza Strip. The UN Commission of Inquiry has already found that Israel is carrying out a “concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system”. The Israeli Occupying Forces’ (IOF) targeting of hospitals and health centers, the denial of adequate medical provisions into and around the Gaza Strip, and the abduction, torture, and killing of medical personnel is evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent to: (i) inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and (ii) impose measures intended to prevent Palestinian births in the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s attacks on protected hospital zones and medical personnel leaves no safe place where the Palestinian people can survive in Gaza, as Al-Haq has highlighted in its landmark report, “The Systematic Destruction of Gaza’s Healthcare System: A Pattern of Genocide”. As Israel subjects the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to genocide, we urgently request States to immediately intervene to end the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and address the systematic targeting of medical personnel and hospitals.
Al-Haq recommends States and international organizations to:
- Name and condemn Israel’s ongoing genocide by calling for a ceasefire and taking all action available to impose a ceasefire and prevent Israel from continuing its genocide of the Palestinian people;
- Impose a two-way arms embargo on Israel. States continuing to transfer arms to Israel are in grave breach of the Arms Trade Treaty, which requires States to terminate arms transfers to Israel amid ample evidence of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity being committed. In particular, the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, and France must cease all arms transfers to Israel or risk facing charges for complicity in genocide;
- Support, fund UNRWA and take steps to ensure the continuation of UNRWA in Palestine, which is providing critical life-saving aid while under direct attack by the Israeli military and government;
- Call for all healthcare workers and all those arbitrarily arrested, disappeared and detained to be released immediately. Call for an end to Israel’s arbitrary detention of Palestinians, particularly as an increasing number of Palestinians are being killed in Israeli detention; and provide for the rehabilitation of the sick, injured, and detained from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem;
- Demand open and unimpeded access to the Gaza Strip, and send international investigators to investigate conditions in detention facilities, including documented instances of rape, sexual violence, torture, physical and mental abuse, and medical neglect of detainees;
- End the siege of Gaza; and demand and provide for the open and unimpeded access of all humanitarian, medical supplies and reconstruction materials to enter the Gaza Strip at scale, including the removal of Israel’s “dual-use” policy;
- Provide for the immediate evacuation of children for medical treatment, and those who require treatment abroad, and ensure their safe return to Gaza;
- Arrest and prosecute perpetrators and enablers of genocide and other crimes, including dual nationals serving in the Israeli Occupying Force, as well upholding legal obligations to carry out the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrests warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.
- Call for specific charges to be added to the ICC Arrest Warrants for genocide, to be brought for the systematic destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and healthcare system intended to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, in addition to the stated charges brought for persecution on the basis of the deprivation of the fundamental right to life and health by preventing medicine and medical supplies from entering Gaza, inflicting extreme pain and suffering by means of inhumane acts on persons in need of treatment;
- Isolate Israel diplomatically, economically, politically:
- Impose targeted sanctions against Israel;
- Unseat Israel from the UN General Assembly, in accordance with the Uniting for Peace Resolution;
- Revoke Israel’s UN membership fully as it continues to wage attacks against the UN in attempts to delegitimize the institution as a whole;
- Sever all diplomatic relations with Israel;
- Sever all political relations with Israel;
- Sever all economic and trade relations with Israel;
- Sever all academic relations and university exchange programs with Israel;
- For countries in the Middle East and North Africa region, end and avoid normalization deals, commonly signed for the promise of lucrative business deals at the expense of Palestinian life.
- Recognize and call for end to Israel’s settler colonial apartheid regime, rooted in death, displacement, land theft, racial oppression, domination, strategic fragmentation, and persecution of the Palestinian people as a whole, causing an ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.
[1] ICRC, Customary IHL Rule 28: Medical Units and Rule 29: Medical Transports and Rule 30: Persons and Objects Displaying the Distinctive Emblem; Fourth Geneva Convention, Art. 18, Wounded and Sick III. Protection of hospitals; First Geneva Convention, Art. 19, Protection of medical units and establishments, <https://ihldatabases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gci-1949/article-19?activeTab=undefined>; First Geneva Convention, Art. 35, Protection of medical transports.