Physicians For Human Rights-Israel Research Articles

Introducing the International Guiding Statement on alternatives to solitary confinement.

Based on the reflections of a multidisciplinary group of experts, Physicians for Human Rights Israel and Antigone worked on the International Guiding Statement on Alternatives to Solitary Confinement, proposing global guidelines for reducing and finally overcoming the use of solitary confinement in prisons.

The Limits of Solidarity: leftist Jewish Israeli activism for Palestine in the 1960’s and 2010’s

What does it mean for Jewish Israelis to engage in Palestinian solidarity? How do they navigate their positions of privilege in their activism? To explore these questions, I begin with a historical trajectory of the rise and fall of leftist Jewish Israeli activist organizations in response to global and local developments. I focus on two periods and their organizations: The Israeli Socialist Organization in the 1960’s and 1970’s and Ta’ayush and Physicians for Human Rights Israel in the 2010’s. In both cases the individuals in question are a very small minority of Israelis. From there I analyze these organizations and activists’ struggles to escape dominant Zionist and Israeli state narratives and the continual shortcomings in their attempts to center Palestinians in their activism. Despite radical positions, activists from both eras remain trapped in existing systems of power.

Mental health impact on children of forcible home invasions in the occupied Palestinian territory

A new report by three leading Israeli human rights organisations—Physicians for Human Rights Israel, Yesh Din and Breaking the Silence—documents the grievous mental health repercussions, including on children, of the...

Beyond 'New Humanitarianism': Physicians for Human Rights-Israel's Mobile Clinic and Open Clinic on the Interface of Social Justice, Human Rights and Medical Relief

Beyond 'New Humanitarianism': Physicians for Human Rights-Israel's Mobile Clinic and Open Clinic on the Interface of Social Justice, Human Rights and Medical Relief

Human rights violations during Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip: 27 December 2008 to 19 January 2009

The Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip from 27 December 2008 to 19 January 2009 was characterised by gross, unprecedented human rights violations, which were the result of a deliberate political decision to overlook the loss of civilian lives in order to save those of Israeli soldiers. These violations included attacking medical personnel and civilians, impeding emergency medical evacuations, restricting health care for the civilian population, preventing referral to care outside the Gaza Strip and jeopardising distribution of medical supplies and food. This article will focus on the right to health of Palestinians under Israeli occupation by presenting case studies that have been collected by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. It will emphasise how the Palestinian medical system has been stretched to its breaking point, severely and negatively affecting the provision of medical services; the consequences of denying patients referral to care outside the Gaza Strip; and other severe violations of human rights. It will conclude by reiterating that only the withdrawal of Israeli occupation from Palestinian land can guarantee the right to health of Palestinians.

BIRTHING ?INVISIBLE? CHILDREN: STATE POWER, NGO ACTIVISM, AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AMONG ?ILLEGAL MIGRANT? WORKERS IN TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

Amina, a Nigerian woman in her early thirties, met Naanah Kofi, a Ghanaian man in his late thirties, at the evangelical church they both attended in South Tel Aviv, just a block away from the city's Central Bus Station. Both came to Israel on an undocumented or illegal basis with the goal of working and earning money, some to save and some to remit home to kin. Eventually the couple moved in together, and Amina became pregnant. Interested in obtaining prenatal care but unable to pay a private Israeli doctor, Amina followed a friend's advice and began making monthly trips to East Jerusalem, over an hour's journey each way and across the invisible but tangible border between Israel and Palestine, to consult a Palestinian physician known within the West African community in Tel Aviv to provide prenatal care at low rates. During Amina's second trimester, the doctor recommended an advanced sonogram. He lacked the technology to provide it, so he referred her to the sole medical facility in Tel Aviv fully accessible to migrant workers: the low-tech, volunteer-run Open Clinic run by the NGO Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR). The clinic itself—equipped with little more than a few donated examination tables, a used EKG machine, and an ill-stocked medicine cabinet containing first aid supplies and an assortment of donated