Physicians for Human Rights–Israel

Physicians for Human Rights–Israel (PHRI) is a medical and human-rights organization whose work joins direct care with efforts to change policies affecting access to health. Its stated aim is a society in which the right to health is granted equally to people under Israel’s responsibility. The organization says it works through humanitarian assistance and policy change, and applies human-rights principles, medical ethics, and social justice to health issues.[1]

The populations PHRI identifies as beneficiaries include Palestinians in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and Gaza, prisoners and detainees, migrant workers, refugees, undocumented people, and Israeli residents. Its areas of work include access to medical care for people without civil status, health equality and freedom of movement for Palestinian patients, prisoners’ health rights, and opposition to privatization trends in the health system.[1][4] It combines free medical assistance with data collection, individual casework, legal action, advocacy in Israel and abroad, education, and mobilization of medical professionals.[1]

PHRI says health care is not separate from questions of equality and political responsibility. It describes the continuing occupation of Palestinian territory as a root cause of human-rights violations, including violations of the right to health, and advocates ending it. The organization also argues that medical professionals can be complicit, passively or actively, in practices that undermine equality and health.[1] These are PHRI’s stated positions; its claims and advocacy concerning occupation, state policy, and military conduct are politically contested.

PHRI dates its establishment to March 1988, at the beginning of the First Intifada, and says it was founded by Israeli physicians led by Dr. Ruchama Marton. Its original name was the Association of Israeli-Palestinian Physicians for Human Rights. The founding document described universal moral principles as integral to medical work and stated that medicine’s goal was to preserve and improve human life and health, regardless of ethnicity, race, or nationality.[1][5]

The organization’s early work included a Mobile Clinic operating in Palestinian areas. PHRI says the clinic has served the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the organization’s early years, with medical, nursing, and pharmaceutical volunteers, students, and interpreters travelling to villages to provide primary care. A 2015 account dates the mobile project to 1989 and described weekend visits to West Bank communities where access to care was difficult; journeys to Gaza depended on permission to enter.[5][4]

PHRI opened its Open Clinic in 1998 to serve migrants in Israel who lacked other options for non-emergency treatment. The organization describes it as the first clinic in Israel of its kind to provide services to migrants and asylum seekers without health insurance. In an account of the clinic’s reopening after renovations, PHRI traced its inspiration to a Ghanaian migrant who died from complications of a treatable illness after fearing that seeking care without civil status could lead to deportation. PHRI has reported that the clinic treated more than 30,000 patients over its history.[6]

The organization’s history also includes awards and changes in how it has delivered services. PHRI’s 2020 impact report lists the Child Protector Award, received from Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000; the Right Livelihood Award in 2010; and the New Israel Fund UK Human Rights Award in 2019. An account published by NGO Monitor says Marton and fieldwork director Salah Haj-Yehya received the Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights in 2002, selected from 100 nominees, for work described by the award as giving compelling voices for peace and reconciliation.[7][8]

PHRI’s organizational identity has been described differently by different sources. A later NGO Monitor profile says it is not formally affiliated with the U.S.-based Physicians for Human Rights, while a 2003 NGO Monitor article characterized it as the Israeli branch of an international nongovernmental organization. An earlier mission statement quoted by that article described PHRI as nonpartisan and nonprofit, committed to protecting the medical human rights of residents of Israel and the territories and opposing the subordination of medical care to political considerations.[3][8]

PHRI’s clinics have provided care to people who faced barriers to medical treatment, including Palestinians in villages and people in Israel without health insurance or civil status. The Mobile Clinic sends volunteer medical teams to communities where access to care is limited. A 2015 report described its services as including treatment in West Bank villages and towns, while PHRI’s own account describes weekly visits and a connection between medical assistance and opposition to the effects of occupation on health.[5][4]

The Open Clinic in Jaffa has served migrants and people without civil status who lack access to Israel’s public health system. A 2015 description listed first aid, medication, pediatrics, gynecology, and psychiatry among its services, as well as help arranging hospital surgery and other complex procedures. PHRI’s Q&A says the clinic provides primary care and specialist services when possible and gives an approximate annual total of 1,500 patients. The same Q&A reports about 15,000 patients annually for the Open and Mobile Clinics together, while the organization’s About Us page gives a broader figure of more than 20,000 people served annually through care or assistance in accessing the right to health; the published pages do not fully reconcile these different totals.[1][4]

The scale of the clinics’ work is also reflected in PHRI’s annual reporting. Its 2014 overview says the Open and Mobile Clinics treated more than 18,000 patients that year, including 12,608 people who received direct care through the Mobile Clinic in the West Bank. It recorded 3,404 members at year’s end, after more than 360 new members and volunteers joined, and reported 23,918 volunteer hours across the clinics and other departments.[9]

A 2020 report records more than 10,200 patients treated in Gaza and the West Bank through the Mobile Clinic, nearly 800 medical professionals trained, and more than two million shekels’ worth of medication and equipment sent to Gaza. After the Mobile Clinic suspended activity in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a Mobile Pharmacy made 16 trips to more than 22 West Bank villages, reaching over 3,200 patients. PHRI reported that medical delegations resumed in the West Bank in June and in Gaza in December.[7]

The organization has also used clinic operations to draw attention to gaps in public provision. It ran a Tel Aviv clinic for foreign workers and refugees for ten years before closing it in March 2008. PHRI said patient numbers had risen by 70 percent in the preceding year and that it could no longer manage the demand. It said closure was intended to press the Health Ministry to take responsibility for non-Israelis’ health care rather than allow the clinic to become a substitute for state services. The Jerusalem Post reported that the clinic was to reopen as an Israel Medical Association clinic, and quoted PHRI chairman Dr. Danny Pillak saying the closure had increased public awareness of refugees’ health problems.[10]

A 2012 academic study of an Israeli human-rights organization’s Open Clinic examined the tensions between medical humanitarianism, human-rights advocacy, and political advocacy. Its abstract says a sharp rise in patients in 2007 prompted intense internal debate over whether temporarily closing the clinic might pressure the government to act. The study discussed the clinic’s humanitarian, political, symbolic, and organizational roles, illustrating a question that recurs in PHRI’s work: whether direct services should fill immediate needs, challenge the policies that create those needs, or do both.[11]

Alongside treatment, PHRI has organized medical training and professional exchange. In a 2021 address, Raphael Walden, identifying himself as the organization’s president, said PHRI sent physicians to West Bank villages and refugee camps on weekends, where they treated hundreds of patients and distributed free medicines. He described those visits as addressing a shortage of medical infrastructure and as fostering understanding and goodwill.[12]

Walden also said PHRI sent physician delegations to Gaza monthly. He recalled a delegation of 22 physicians that performed dozens of advanced operations and trained local doctors, and described specialist clinics and scientific conferences held there. He said the organization also supported training and in-service programs for physicians and medical staff in Israeli hospitals.[12] PHRI’s 2014 annual overview records seven medical delegations to Gaza that performed 28 surgeries and training for 1,132 medical and paramedical professionals in the West Bank and Gaza.[9]

In 2008, two Israeli doctors volunteering with PHRI received special permits to enter Gaza and perform complex plastic and orthopedic surgeries on children from Gaza City and Khan Younis. The effort was initiated by PHRI together with the U.S.-based Operation Smile.[13] In 2020, PHRI paid for a four-day simulation course at Sheba Medical Center for Palestinian health professionals, including participant travel, accommodation, and meals. Its executive director, Ran Goldstein, put the program’s total cost at about NIS 90,000; PHRI spokesman Ran Yaron said about 150 Palestinian doctors, nurses, and paramedics had completed courses there since 2009. Goldstein said the aim included strengthening the self-sufficiency of the Palestinian health sector.[14]

PHRI’s activity has also included supplying medicines and supporting emergency medical access. Its 2014 report says that during the July–August hostilities it staffed a contact line to try to assist with medical evacuations in Gaza and transferred medicines and medical supplies worth approximately $750,000. After the ceasefire, it commissioned a fact-finding mission involving eight international medical experts. The report says the mission examined injuries and attacks, harm to medical teams and facilities, evacuation, effects on the health-care system, and longer-term health issues.[9]

In 2020, Raphael Walden described a PHRI clinic for refugees and stateless people as their sole access to medical services. The same address said the organization worked to improve health services in Israel’s geographic and social periphery and sought decent health services for prisoners.[12] The U.S. State Department’s 2012 Trafficking in Persons Report identified PHRI volunteer nurse Azezet Habtezghi Kidane, also known as Sister Aisha, as a contributor to bringing attention to trafficking and abuses affecting people from Africa seeking refuge. It said her work helped lead to a research project that interviewed hundreds of trafficking victims living in Israel, and that the department relied on her and PHRI’s work to raise awareness.[15]

PHRI’s advocacy includes individual casework and petitions addressing access to treatment, prison health care, and military conduct. A U.S. State Department report for 2010 described a February 9 petition by PHRI and Gisha on behalf of Issam Hamdan, a 40-year-old Gazan with severe back pain who had been refused entry to Israel for specialized treatment in Jerusalem. Authorities withdrew their objection after the petition, allowing him to seek treatment. The same report noted that two-year-old Nasma Abu Lashee died of treatable leukemia on October 16 while waiting for permission to receive treatment in Israel.[16]

PHRI’s 2014 overview says it processed 323 freedom-of-movement and medical-access cases and achieved an approximately 30 percent success rate. In a separate report about cases from that year, the organization said it received 246 requests from Palestinian patients facing denied or substantially delayed permits to enter Israel for treatment, with funding commitments for the care. PHRI said that after its intervention and volunteer doctors’ opinions, restrictions were lifted in 47.5 percent of cases involving patients needing to leave Gaza or the West Bank for treatment; it also said two patients died after their requests were not approved.[9][2]

The same account said PHRI documented 15 cases in 2014 in which Gaza patients were summoned for Shin Bet questioning as a condition for consideration of permit applications, and alleged invasive searches in two cases. It also described a patient whose exit for treatment was allegedly conditioned on providing information to the Shin Bet. The Shin Bet denied conditioning humanitarian permits on willingness to cooperate, rejected the invasive-search allegations, and said applications were assessed individually by balancing security risk and medical need. COGAT described PHRI’s report as biased, disputed its data, and said most non-approvals resulted from missing or forged medical documents.[2]

Israeli authorities also supplied figures that placed the permit issue in a broader context. The Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration said that 13,222 people from Gaza entered Israel for medical treatment in 2014 and that it coordinated 775 ambulance transfers. The cited report said more than 102,000 Palestinians from the West Bank received coordinated medical treatment in Israel that year, alongside about 4,000 ambulance transfers. COGAT said requests were assessed according to medical urgency and circumstances, and that it sought to coordinate urgent transfers in life-saving cases even when a security restriction existed.[2]

A 2008 commentary by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs described PHRI’s criticism of Israeli restrictions and delays affecting Gazans seeking permits for medical referrals. It attributed to PHRI the view that security checks in medical decisions could cause life-threatening delays and violate medical ethics. The commentary’s author disputed aspects of that criticism and reported that approvals for referrals to Israel, the Palestinian Authority, or Jordan rose from 4,932 in 2006 to 7,176 in 2007, while the approval rate fell from 90.2 percent to 81.5 percent. These figures and the author’s interpretation are that commentary’s account, rather than uncontested findings.[17]

PHRI has also challenged policies affecting people without legal status. A 2019 academic study of undocumented children reports that the Health Ministry reversed a policy in 2018 after 18 years of government-subsidized medical insurance for those children. The authors said the change could leave many with access only to emergency care and potentially affect several thousand children; they reported that dozens of families had sought PHRI’s help. The study authors characterized the policy change as apparently politically motivated, an interpretation that should be understood as their assessment.[18]

The State Department’s 2020 human-rights report said the Supreme Court ordered the Health Ministry on November 30 to allow children of undocumented migrants to be covered by a national health-insurance policy, following a PHRI petition. It also reported that PHRI said the ministry continued to exclude those children. The report’s account therefore records both the court order and a subsequent dispute about implementation.[19]

PHRI has reported on the health of prisoners and detainees, including access to treatment and safeguards for medical professionals. The State Department’s 2009 report summarized PHRI’s claim that the Ministry of Health had rejected NGO calls to publish procedures for medical staff to report suspected physical abuse of prisoners. PHRI also said the ministry refused to extend whistleblower protection to Israeli Prison Service doctors reporting possible torture.[20]

The State Department’s 2010 report said PHRI considered isolation of prisoners with mental illness common. It described a PHRI petition concerning Ibrahim Abu Mustafa, who had been held in isolation since 2004 because of his mental-health condition. On August 25 the state notified him that he would be released from isolation, but the report said his release had not been confirmed by year’s end.[16]

In its 2020 human-rights report, the State Department summarized a 2019 PHRI report finding significant failures in the Israeli Prison Service medical system. PHRI assessed that prison health care did not provide services equivalent to those available to the general population through health maintenance organizations, and said that half of the incidents it examined posed a risk to inmates’ health because of substandard or denied treatment. Its recommendations included applying national HMO standards in prisons, establishing professional oversight, and expanding access for outside medical practitioners.[19]

Earlier State Department reporting described access PHRI had to detention settings. A 2005 report said it could inspect police detention facilities and make several inspection tours per year, but did not receive comparable access to Israel Prison Service facilities. The report also recorded a PHRI representative’s statement that the organization could not verify a Justice Ministry claim that a restraint method known as “banana” positioning was no longer used. The same report attributed to PHRI accounts of security forces relying more often on psychological than strictly physical abuse, including threats to demolish homes or question prisoners’ elderly parents, and reported lengthy detention in harsh conditions, including solitary confinement.[21]

The State Department’s 2005 report also described a September petition by PHRI and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel concerning a home in an unrecognized Bedouin village that lacked electricity. The petition sought a connection so that a three-year-old child with cancer could receive air conditioning recommended by doctors; the request remained pending at year’s end.[21]

PHRI has investigated conditions affecting people seeking refuge and non-citizens’ access to health care. The 2010 State Department report said PHRI estimated that one-third of families with children who were not legal residents could purchase medical insurance. It also summarized PHRI’s reporting on pregnant asylum seekers and single mothers who, after release from prison, lacked health insurance, pregnancy and postnatal services, and trauma counseling; PHRI said many had experienced sexual or gender-based violence in Sinai.[16]

In 2008, the State Department reported on a PHRI allegation that the Israel Security Agency prevented Palestinians from leaving Gaza for medical treatment in Israel or abroad unless they agreed to inform for Israeli intelligence. PHRI’s report drew on testimony describing alleged coercion and blackmail of gravely ill patients, including people in need of urgent treatment for life-threatening conditions. The Israel Security Agency denied the allegation.[22]

PHRI has produced broader reports on health disparities and wartime conditions. The State Department’s 2020 report summarized a PHRI report based on Central Bureau of Statistics data and surveys that described differences in life expectancy, infant mortality, morbidity, self-assessed health, diabetes, obesity, and smoking rates between Jewish and Arab populations.[19] In its 2014 account of the Gaza conflict, PHRI said it had recruited eight international medical experts unaffiliated with Israeli or Palestinian parties. NGO Monitor’s account of the resulting report quotes PHRI as saying that failures in warning systems, the absence of escape routes, the collapse of wounded-evacuation mechanisms, and strikes on rescue teams increased civilian casualties. It also quotes the report as saying its purpose was to provide evidence for legal determinations through local or international justice mechanisms.[23]

PHRI’s broader significance lies in its combination of clinical services, professional mobilization, and policy advocacy. An academic case study of its Open Clinic treated the organization as an example of the tensions humanitarian groups face when direct care can both relieve immediate suffering and reduce pressure on governments to change policy. The study identified humanitarian, political, symbolic, empowering, and organizational roles for the clinic.[11]

PHRI has also connected Israeli and Palestinian medical professionals through clinics, operations, conferences, and training programs.[9][12] Its influence has extended beyond clinical treatment: the U.S. State Department credited volunteer nurse Azezet Habtezghi Kidane and PHRI with helping draw international attention to trafficking and abuse affecting African asylum seekers and with supporting research involving hundreds of victims.[15]

PHRI’s public role has generated disputes over military policy, the scope of advocacy, and the accuracy or interpretation of its reports. In 2003, the organization petitioned the High Court of Justice to prohibit the IDF from using tank-fired flechette shells in the Gaza Strip. The court dismissed the petition after finding that use of the ammunition was not prohibited by international warfare conventions, and declined to intervene in the security forces’ choice of combat measures. The cited account describes a flechette shell as dispersing steel darts across several hundred square meters when detonated.[24]

In a separate petition, PHRI challenged safety-buffer distances for artillery shelling toward Gaza. In 2011 the court denied the petition, treating the matter as a professional-operational decision concerning the IDF’s planning of combat and defense against Qassam rockets launched toward Israeli territory. It said the military authorities had relevant expertise and that the court would be “inclined to back away from intervening” in such matters.[24]

PHRI also joined 52 other human-rights organizations in a March 2011 letter asking Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin to stop proposed legislation imposing sanctions on bodies advocating a boycott of Israel or particular areas, including the West Bank. The bill passed its first reading by 32 votes to 12. Supporters and opponents disagreed over whether the definition of boycott was too vague and could restrict freedom of expression; the sponsors said a revised version defined boycott as intentional avoidance of economic, cultural, or academic relations solely because of ties to Israel, its institutions, or areas under its control.[25]

The organization’s wartime reporting has also been contested. NGO Monitor’s account of PHRI’s 2014 Gaza fact-finding report says the report acknowledged that its team lacked access to evidence about Palestinian armed combatants’ conduct and lacked military expertise to provide a comprehensive analysis of Israeli weapons. NGO Monitor disputes the report’s methods and conclusions; those criticisms are the advocacy organization’s assessments, not independent findings established by the cited page.[23]

In 2023, PHRI examined attacks on medical and rescue personnel assisting evacuations from communities near Gaza on October 7. Based on media reporting and other collected material, it described a pattern of intentional attacks on marked medical teams and facilities and called for evidence to be investigated as possible war crimes. Its account discussed the killings of MDA paramedic and ambulance driver Awwad Darawshe, senior paramedic and ambulance driver Aharon Haimov, paramedic Amit Mann, and Soroka physician Daniel Levy. PHRI said attacks on medical facilities and personnel in Gaza during the continuing conflict would be addressed in other publications, citing lack of access and resources to gather testimony and investigate there at that time. The report’s call for investigation is not itself a legal judgment.[26]

PHRI’s 2025 report with B’Tselem accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. The Times of Israel described PHRI’s report as a legal-medical analysis of what it called the step-by-step dismantling of Gaza’s health and life-sustaining systems, including electricity, clean water, and access to food. Israel rejected the accusation, said it was fighting an existential war in accordance with international law, and characterized the allegation as antisemitic. A United Nations Security Council document cited a July 2025 PHRI position paper titled “Destructions of conditions of life: A Health Analysis of the Gaza Genocide” and characterized PHRI and B’Tselem as stating that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The accusation is a contested political and legal characterization, not an adjudicated finding in the cited material.[27][28]

Reports about the detention of Gaza health workers have prompted competing accounts. A 2025 Times of Israel article described a PHRI study based on interviews conducted by its lawyers with 24 detained Gazan health workers between July and December 2024. PHRI alleged beatings, torture, psychological abuse, medical neglect, inadequate food, and failures of legal protection, and argued that prolonged detention of medical personnel deprived Gaza’s population of needed care. The IDF rejected the allegations as inaccurate or baseless and said detainees received meals, medical care, and access to lawyers in accordance with the law. The Israel Prison Service said it was unaware of the allegations and, to its knowledge, they were untrue.[29]

A separate Jerusalem Post report on PHRI’s account said the organization reported that four medical professionals had died in Israeli custody, that 250 Palestinian medical professionals had been detained during the war, that 70 had been released, and that almost 150 remained incarcerated. The IDF rejected the allegations, disputed aspects of PHRI’s account, and said detainees were medically examined and could receive further care as needed.[30] A 2026 brief by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, relaying Jerusalem Post reporting, said PHRI had petitioned the High Court seeking release of 14 Gazan doctors held in administrative detention, including Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, whom the brief described as Hamas-affiliated. The brief said the state was due to respond but did not establish whether it did so or provide PHRI’s or the state’s account.[31]

PHRI’s advocacy has also drawn criticism over its political positions and financing. NGO Monitor identifies the occupation as a central element of the organization’s mission and reports that PHRI received NIS 29,297,778 from foreign governmental bodies between 2012 and 2023, based on filings to Israel’s Registrar of Non-Profits; it reports 2023 income of NIS 16.4 million and expenses of NIS 14.2 million.[3] In 2025, JNS reported that the Jewish Agency made PHRI a one-time donation of NIS 160,000 in 2023, which the agency said was emergency assistance for foreign workers’ basic and medical needs, given at the request of Jewish donors. The donation and PHRI’s activities drew political criticism, alongside the organization’s stated mission.[32]

In 2011, PHRI was among organizations opposing the anti-boycott bill; in other cases, its petitions challenged IDF operational choices and its reports have sharply criticized Israeli policy. These activities have made it a participant in public debate as well as a provider of medical services. Disputes over its allegations, methods, and political framing should be distinguished from its documented programs of clinical care, training, and legal assistance.