Diagnosing the Barriers: Health and Human Rights in Israel-Palestine

“I saw how displacement can affect almost every aspect of a person’s life”.

Every year, PHRI’s Open Clinic for Status-less Individuals in Jaffa assists some 1,500 people who share one thing: they live in Israel yet aren’t Israeli citizens or residents, and therefore cannot access the country’s public healthcare system. Beyond that shared experience, their backgrounds and life stories vary widely: they come from dozens of countries and cultures, and their migration paths differ. Many of them are asylum seekers who cannot return home, where their lives might be at risk. For some, home is on the other side of the planet, while for others, it’s a few dozen kilometers away.

“Sometimes I meet people who are afraid to come out of the shadows and seek help. I remember a Palestinian woman who gave birth… at home, not by choice, but because going to a hospital felt dangerous”.

Join PHRI’s Lubov Borshevsky and Lee Caspi for a conversation about the intersecting vulnerabilities faced by migrants and what life is like away from social and legal support networks. In this episode, we will also explore some of Lubov’s personal circumstances and how she, originally from Ukraine, found herself working with these communities in Israel while war rages back home in Kyiv.

“The system tells you... You can be Arab... but you need to be... “good Arabs”. The Arabs that do manage to build a career and get to a more senior position... need to be fine with the flag and the soldiers and the magnifying glass they’re constantly under. You need to accept that because you’re Palestinian, your career development will be more difficult, and you shouldn’t complain about it.”

On August 9th, allegations emerged against Rambam Hospital (Haifa), where four Israeli soldiers who had been wounded in Lebanon were admitted for treatment. One of the soldiers was in serious condition, and his family alleged that he had been “locked overnight” in a room with “only Arabic-speaking staff”, where he was mistreated.

This incident – where racist allegations accused Palestinian medical staff in an Israeli hospital of being “disloyal” and untrustworthy – is the tip of the iceberg, representing a far wider, more pervasive reality of silencing and persecution.

Join PHRI’s Shani Bar Tuvia and Lee Caspi for a conversation about this libelous incident, the response it met in the Israeli healthcare system, the public, and the media, and the much wider phenomenon it represents. In this episode, we delve into the daily experience of thousands of Palestinian medical workers in Israeli institutions, who are forced to lead their professional lives under a microscope. A reality where any perceived or real step outside the lines of what they are permitted to say, feel, and be, might damage their careers and professional prospects.

*For more background, listen to our previous episode on PHRI’s report on the silencing of Palestinian healthcare professionals in the Israeli medical system: https://rss.com/podcasts/diagnosingthebarriers/2433021

Or read PHRI’s report on the subject: https://www.phr.org.il/en/report-hashtaka-eng/

For years, Palestinian public healthcare workers in the occupied West Bank have been paid only a small portion of their salaries, leading to a strike by the Palestinian Medical Association announced in May 2026. Basic medications are partially or wholly unavailable at public Palestinian hospitals throughout the West Bank. Governmental clinics and hospitals are limiting services to emergency and life-saving interventions. Patients are unable to access treatment for a wide range of illnesses and conditions.

All this is occurring against the backdrop of Israeli authorities' intensified military operations across the West Bank, accelerated settlement expansion along with settler violence, blocking Palestinian laborers from entering Israel, and a significant increase in withholding Palestinian Authority tax revenues.

Join PHRI’s Milena Ansari and Lee Caspi as they delve into the roots of a public health crisis that has gone under the radar, despite the catastrophic implications for the millions of Palestinian residents in the West Bank. In this episode of Diagnosing the Barriers, we attempt to unpick an issue with multifaceted, intersecting origins, including primary Israeli control over Palestinian customs revenues, impacting every aspect of daily civilian life in the West Bank.

“Israel doesn’t just broadcast to the world ‘we have doctors that are held without any sort of charges for the past two years’; they’re not going to give that to the public on a silver platter. People need to inquire.”

Join PHRI’s Maha Loulou and Lee Caspi for a discussion about our campaign demanding the release of 14 doctors from Gaza who have been held by Israel, without charge and subject to grave torture and rights violations, for periods ranging from 1.5 to 2.5 years. We share some of their individual stories and what is happening behind bars, away from the public eye, to a group of highly skilled medical professionals who are desperately needed back home.

*For more background, listen to our previous episode on the systemic torture of medical personnel from Gaza in Israeli custody: https://rss.com/podcasts/diagnosingthebarriers/2187997

Or read PHRI’s report on the subject: https://www.phr.org.il/en/torture-of-medical-workers/

**This episode was recorded on June 1st, a mere two days before PHRI received a firsthand report from Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya's lawyer about his grave condition and the imminent threat to his life. While we work around the clock to try to save Dr. Abu Safiya and bring greater visibility to his case, we are continuing our efforts to release all 14 Gaza doctors still held in Israeli detention.

With no access to a functioning medical system, at least 18,500 patients from Gaza wait for medical evacuation by the World Health Organization. But, where to? While Israel argues the answer is third countries, Physicians for Human Rights Israel is pushing for evacuation to the Palestinian hospitals in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This episode discusses the current healthcare situation in Gaza and the urgent need to reopen the medical evacuation corridor to the West Bank. Join PHRI’s Keren Shavit and Lee Caspi for a sobering discussion about the urgency of the situation – every delay risks thousands of lives and generates untold human suffering.

* In this episode, the term “antibiotic resistance” is used to refer to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which encompasses resistance to antibiotics and other antimicrobial treatments.

** For background on the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system and the cascading effect described in the episode, see PHRI’s report “Destruction of Conditions of Life: A Health Analysis of the Gaza Genocide” - https://www.phr.org.il/en/genocide-in-gaza-eng/?pr=20812

Medical systems are meant to protect life.

They rely on visibility: documentation, communication, accountability.

But what happens when those same systems fail to interrupt harm?

In this episode, we dive into two recent publications by Physicians for Human Rights Israel — one documenting deaths and disappearances in detention, and the other exposing the erosion of medical ethics inside hospitals.

Together, they raise a difficult question:

When harm is both produced and obscured — who is left to witness?

This episode brings together two independently researched reports — one by Physicians for Human Rights–Israel and one by Physicians for Human Rights — combining women’s testimonies and clinicians’ accounts to examine how attacks on health infrastructure, food deprivation, and restricted medical access in Gaza have reshaped pregnancy, childbirth, and newborn survival.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Shani Bar Tuvia about a new report based on dozens of interviews, shedding light on the silencing — both formal and informal — of Palestinian doctors, nurses, and healthcare professionals in Israel's medical institutions.

We examine what happens when coexistence depends on erasure, and what this reality means for medicine, ethics, and identity within Israel’s healthcare system.

In this episode of Diagnosing the Barriers, we look at how civic space in Israel is rapidly shrinking—and what that means for human rights organizations and activists in Israel and Palestine, to try and operate under increasing political pressure.

In this episode, we sit down with Tirza Leibowitz, Deputy Director of Physicians for Human Rights–Israel, to talk about PHRI’s groundbreaking report “Genocide in Gaza.”

The paper made global headlines as—for the first time—Israeli human rights organizations openly accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. In this episode we examine how the report traces genocide through the systematic destruction of the basic conditions needed to survive: healthcare, food, water, and shelter.

Trigger warning: We discuss difficult issues, including attacks on hospitals, starvation, and the targeting of medical workers.