One year into Gaza ceasefire, report finds no hospital has returned to full operation

A new report by Physicians for Human Rights Israel examines the state of Gaza’s healthcare system a year after the ceasefire in the Strip began in October 2025, finding that conditions have only marginally improved.

Israel has repeatedly provided evidence throughout the war that Hamas used hospitals and other medical facilities in Gaza for military purposes, including as command posts, weapons storage sites, and systematically using cover for its tunnel network. During the war, the IDF uncovered tunnels and weapons at several medical complexes, most prominently at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital.

The IDF has also presented evidence of Hamas infrastructure at other medical facilities, including tunnels at Rantisi, the Indonesian and European hospitals, and has said gunmen operated from within hospital grounds. Hamas and Gaza health officials have repeatedly denied that hospitals were used as military command centers.

As a result, during the fighting, the IDF evacuated a significant number of hospitals, including their staff and patients, and some were extensively damaged or destroyed during battles between Hamas and Israeli forces. Shifa Hospital, where Hamas maintained a command center, was largely destroyed during two rounds of intense fighting and has been rebuilt over the past year.

According to the PHRI report, no hospital in the Strip is fully operational today. In October 2025, 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals were partially functioning. Nearly a year later, 20 hospitals are partially operational — but not a single one is functioning at full capacity.

In October 2025, Gaza had 103 intensive care beds. By July 2026, that number had increased by just one, to 104, the report says.

The report also says patients in Gaza have continued to die while awaiting medical evacuation. According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, between October 2023 and July 2, 2026, at least 1,570 patients died while waiting to be evacuated for treatment, including 505 cancer patients and at least 264 children.

Before October 7, patients from Gaza could be transferred for treatment to hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Following the October 7 massacre, however, Israel barred such transfers. This remains the case despite the fact that specific Palestinian hospitals, including in East Jerusalem, have dedicated funding for treating Palestinian patients and a long history of receiving patients from Gaza. Today, medical evacuations from Gaza are permitted only to third countries.

Keren Shavit, projects coordinator in the Occupied Palestinian Territory Department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), tells The Times of Israel: “For years, these hospitals treated patients from Gaza as part of the Palestinian healthcare system, and they are ready and able to receive them. In many cases, the care patients desperately need is available just an hour or two from home. Yet since October 2023, Israel has imposed a blanket ban on transferring patients from Gaza to these hospitals.”

A High Court petition challenging the policy has not been dismissed outright. Rather, the court has periodically considered whether to intervene in the government’s policy barring patients from Gaza from traveling to Israel and the West Bank for treatment.

In its latest decision, in July 2026, the High Court declined to intervene in the policy at that stage and instructed the state to submit an update on the policy by December 21, 2026.