Activist Sami Al Arian (R), author Kenize Mourad (2nd R), Professor Christine Chinkin (3rd R), academic Biljana Vankovska (3rd L), activist Chandra Muzaffar (2nd L), and Dr. Ghada Karmi (L) attend final session of the Gaza Tribunal, a global and independent initiative established to investigate Israel’s ongoing war crimes in Gaza, held at Istanbul University, Turkiye on October 24, 2025. [Muhammed Enes Yıldırım – Anadolu Agency]
The Gaza Tribunal’s final session continued Friday at Istanbul University, with powerful expert testimony asserting that Israel deliberately dismantled Gaza’s health care and public health systems as part of a larger policy of “mass harm to civilians,” Anadolu reports.
Doctors and humanitarian specialists detailed what they described as systematic attacks on medical workers, hospitals, water systems, and the basic means of civilian survival.
During Friday morning’s panel titled “Targeting of Civilians and Civilian Infrastructure—Medical Systems,” four medical professionals, including International President of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Dr. Javid Abdelmoneim, Turkish physician Dr. Taner Kamaci, Norwegian emergency doctor and professor Dr. Mads Gilbert, and UK-based systemic psychotherapist and trainer Gwyn Daniel, presented evidence from the past two years of the Gaza war, calling for international accountability.
‘Deliberate mass harm to civilians’
Dr. Javid Abdelmoneim, a British emergency physician and humanitarian with MSF, testified that Gaza’s hospitals and health workers were not merely collateral victims of conflict but the direct targets of a systematic strategy:
“Members of the jury, our health system has not collapsed by chance. It’s destroyed when hospitals are deliberately struck. Supplies are choked off. Health care workers are killed or detained. And the water and sanitation system is ruined.”
He noted staggering casualties among medical personnel, saying: “Over 1,700 health care workers have been killed since October 2023. At MSF, 15 of our colleagues have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.”
Abdelmoneim directly cited incidents communicated to Israeli authorities in advance, including the November 2023 strike on Al-Awda Hospital.
“We had repeatedly informed Israeli authorities that Al-Auda was a working hospital with patients and medical staff and therefore protected under international humanitarian law.”
He said two MSF doctors, Mohamed Abou-Jaida and Ahmed As-Saffar, were killed in the attack.
He added, several days earlier, “Our colleague Abad Shabab, a nurse, was killed when a clearly marked MSF convoy came under attack in Gaza City. Despite our authorization to evacuate, he was shot in the head.”
Abdelmoneim also described the detention and disappearance of medical personnel, referencing the Oct. 26 arrest of Dr. Abou-Jaida, who he said remains in prison without charge.
– Collapse of water, sanitation, disease control
Stressing that public health failures were engineered, he provided examples to back up his claim. He said: “Less than a third of the fuel needs for desalination pumps and water trucks were allowed by Israel… Polio was declared in Gaza while I was there. It had been eradicated years previously.”
The consequences were visible in every clinic, he noted: “Patients with trauma injuries, chronic diseases, cancer, communicable illnesses, malnourished children, and pregnant women were dying from preventable causes.”
Abdelmoneim also urged the panel to treat these medical stories as legal evidence.
“It remains an urgent need for credible and proactive mechanisms to deliver justice for the thousands that have been killed and injured by Israeli actions over the past two years.”
He concluded with a stark indictment, saying: “It is the deliberate dismantling of the means to survive… The genocide is far from over.”
– System ‘preventing life itself’
Dr. Taner Kamaci, speaking as a Turkish health official who worked inside Gaza, described health care conditions as a complete breakdown of protection for civilians.
“For two years, every day, people who have been deprived of electricity, water, and bread… have been deprived of their physical, social, and mental health. Therefore, Israel has deprived all people of water for the past two years, which is essential for their health.”
He shared firsthand accounts of surgery without anesthesia, children transported to hospitals by donkey carts, and patients dying in hallways due to a total shortage of surgical capacity.
His remarks underscored that the survival struggle does not end once the bomb falls, saying: “It’s not just a bomb… Surviving in Gaza during the war is almost a miracle.”
Kamaci cited numbers from Gaza health authorities documenting 1,722 health workers killed and 362 imprisoned. In two years, “at least 4,000 children, nearly 15,000 people, lost at least one limb.”
He finished by framing the war as an outright assault on humanity: “What is the meaning of the name of this genocide?”
– Evidence-based testimony on 40-year pattern
Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian emergency physician who has worked in Gaza for decades, began by naming colleagues killed with their families. “Within all these numbers we have, Palestinians are of course not numbers but humans with families just like us,” he said.
Gilbert broadened the timeline of alleged violations and said: “This has been going on… for more than 40 years… the root cause of ill health is the Israeli occupation.”
He described a long-documented pattern of Israeli attacks on hospitals, ambulances, and health workers, which he said had continued despite UN investigations dating back to 1982.
“We have surpassed 100,000 killed in Gaza. And don’t forget that three out of four are women and children, and between 80 and 90% are civilians.”
He described his approach as “evidence-based solidarity,” citing UN statistics, scientific studies, and 42 years of clinical experience.
Gilbert cited 328 UN situation reports since October 7, 2023, noting that scientists found 41% underreporting in the first year of casualties. He added that 10,000-20,000 more people are likely buried under the rubble.
– ‘Intention to have more people dying’
Gilbert testified that at least 1,700 Palestinian health care workers have been killed, and 301 have been detained, many of whom have been tortured. According to a WHO dashboard, 2,853 health care workers and patients have been killed or injured in Gaza in the last two years alone—”one every six hours,” he said.
He described the attacks as “extremely systematic” with a clear strategic purpose. Removing hospitals from society’s safety net only leads to more deaths and to extinguishing the will to resist, he said.
Gilbert warned that 1,000-2,000 child amputees would need 10-20 surgeries to walk again, and described a campaign to “invalidate and harm as much as possible.”
He also highlighted dramatic collapses in public health indicators.
“It is the starvation program: dehydration, lack of water, and untreated diseases. Half the population is under 18. You have a system of genocide using scientific knowledge of what creates health to destroy health.”
Gilbert condemned the silence of Western medical institutions. “Staying silent, while pretending to be neutral, is a form of oppression. We will never forget, and we will never forgive.”
Yet he closed by affirming the perseverance of Palestinian health workers risking their lives daily. “To resist is to exist,” he remarked.
– ‘Trauma is continuous and ongoing’
Gwyn Daniel, a systemic family therapist based in the UK, said that two years of continuous Israeli bombardment have precipitated an unprecedented psychological collapse in Gaza, describing conditions as “an ongoing genocide.”
“How do we understand mental health in the context of a genocide, an ongoing genocide?” she said. “One of the criteria for genocide is causing serious bodily and mental harm to members of the group. The mental harm is one that we all know about.”
Daniel stressed that Gaza’s trauma cannot be treated as a past event. “As my Palestinian colleagues always point out, there is no place for trauma. Trauma is continuous and ongoing.”
She argued that ethical mental health responses must confront the political causes of suffering.
“The only ethical responses to collective trauma on this scale are those that address evidence of political violence and the need for self-determination and liberation,” she said. “That means supporting interventions that embrace activism and modes of resistance.”
– Children bear most extreme impact
Daniel described a population living “in a death zone,” where people feel “they are already dead, or longing to be alive,” and where the destruction of hospitals, schools, and community structures “aids at the heart and soul of the community… its collective consciousness and its systems of mutual support.”
Children, she said, are bearing the most extreme impact. “Nearly 40,000 children have lost their lives there,” she noted. Constant fear and hyperarousal “will have a permanent impact, because there are no contacts by children from those states.”
Despite the devastation, Daniel emphasized the courage of Palestinian professionals who continue working: “It means supporting those mental health practitioners already operating in Gaza… operating at great risk to themselves.”
Quoting the latest report from the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, she concluded: “Gaza, despite the pain, continues to pulse with life… it is the duty of all of us in the international community to remain alongside it.”
