العربية
HE
العربية
HE
On July 20, 2026, the High Court of Justice (HCJ) decided not to intervene, in the State’s decision to prohibit the evacuation of critically ill patients from the Gaza Strip to hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The decision was issued in a petition filed by four human rights organizations, including HaMoked, which remains pending. This is the second petition filed by the organizations on this issue, after their previous petition was deleted following the State’s commitment to implement a framework for evacuating patients to third countries.
Meanwhile, the need for life-saving medical treatment is greater than ever. According to OCHA data, 18,500 patients were in need of immediate medical evacuation as of the end of April 2026. According to World Health Organization estimates, 900 patients in Gaza died while awaiting medical evacuation between the beginning of the war and November 2025. Gaza’s Ministry of Health estimates that another 300 patients have died since the ceasefire came into effect in October 2025.
The first petition and the procedure for evacuation to third countries
On June 5, 2024, three human rights organizations – Physicians for Human Rights Israel, HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, and Gisha – filed an urgent petition with the HCJ, seeking to compel the State to immediately establish and implement a mechanism enabling the evacuation of Palestinian patients from the Gaza Strip to East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
During the proceedings, the State formulated a procedure for evacuating patients to third countries via Israeli territory. In its judgment of March 2, 2025, the HCJ held that the petition had been exhausted and should be deleted. According to the judgment, the new procedure formulated by the State, providing for the departure of patients from Gaza to third countries, addressed the need raised by the petitioners.
However, in monitoring the implementation of the procedure, the organizations found that it provided a solution for only a few hundred patients. At the same time, the continuing collapse of the healthcare system led to a steady deterioration in patients’ conditions, and the need for medical evacuation only grew. The organizations therefore filed another petition on the matter.
The second petition
On November 20, 2025, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, HaMoked, Gisha and Adalah filed a petition for an order nisi and a motion for an urgent hearing, seeking to compel the State to allow the evacuation of patients to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The petitioners argued that the State’s proposed solution of evacuating patients to third countries had proven to be only partial, unreliable and unfeasible for many patients who, given their medical condition, are unable to fly. The petitioners noted that the number of patients awaiting evacuation had not decreased, but had actually grown – by some 4,500 compared to when the first petition was filed nearly two years earlier.
The petitioners also emphasized the severity of conditions in the Gaza Strip as a result of the war and the urgent need to provide adequate medical care to the tens of thousands of patients still awaiting evacuation. They drew the Court’s attention to the hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents living in displacement camps, in overcrowded conditions, suffering varying degrees of hunger and lacking basic hygiene, conditions that increase the risk of infection and weaken the immune system. They further noted that the medical infrastructure available to treat them had been severely damaged. At least 94% of hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed, and as of May 2026, some 44% of essential medicines are at at zero stock.
All of this makes the issue an urgent humanitarian matter, as counsel for the petitioners, Adv. Adi Lustigman, aptly stated in the petition:
“With every passing day... patients who could have been cured, who could have been helped, whose disability or amputation could have been prevented, whose lives could have been saved – are lost, harmed and die.”
Despite the urgency, the legal proceedings did not advance at a pace appropriate to a humanitarian case. The first hearing in the presence of the parties took place only on July 19, 2026, eight months after the petition was filed. During the hearing, the justices placed responsibility for the failure to evacuate patients on third countries. One of the justices stated that the petitioners should devote most of their efforts to persuading third countries to accept the patients.
The following day, the Court decided not to intervene, for the time being, in the State’s policy prohibiting medical evacuations to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and ordered the State to submit an update by December 21, 2026.
Despite significant changes in the situation in Gaza, including the establishment of a partial, formal ceasefire and the opening of the Rafah Crossing, as of the time of writing the State continues to maintain the prohibition, without any exception even for urgent cases. This policy places nearly 20,000 people at real risk of irreversible harm to their health and even death.
