Gaza's Medical Crisis Deepens as Displaced Palestinians Face Long-term Care Gap

Tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza are living with permanent physical injuries and psychological trauma, requiring long-term medical care that remains largely out of reach. Nearly the entire population has been displaced, many multiple times over. Israeli military forces and local militias now control nearly 65 percent of the territory, blocking displaced Palestinians from returning to their homes and lands east of the shifting demarcation line known as the “yellow line.”

This humanitarian catastrophe has not ended with the ceasefire. Since the October 2025 ceasefire began, at least 1,303 Palestinians, including more than 300 children, have been killed in Israeli air strikes. Large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure, mass forced displacement, and killings continue despite a reduction in the scale and intensity of attacks, according to Amnesty International, which on Monday pointed to South Africa’s submission to the International Court of Justice as evidence that Israel has systematically violated binding court orders designed to prevent genocide.

South Africa’s ICJ filing documents that Israel has failed to comply with legally binding provisional measures issued since January 2024. Across three separate rulings in January, March, and May 2024, the court required Israel to prevent acts of genocide, stop public incitement to genocide, ensure unobstructed provision of basic services and humanitarian aid, and preserve evidence related to allegations of genocidal acts. Those orders remain in effect. Israel, according to both Amnesty and South Africa’s submission, continues to violate them.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, was direct about what sets South Africa’s action apart. “The South African submission is an outlier in a crowded field of states who have failed to take action to prevent Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and in some cases enabled it,” she said. “Many third states have helped sustain Israel’s impunity, some by failing to take any effective measures to enforce the Court’s binding provisional measures, and others also by actively providing the diplomatic cover, financial resources and material support that have enabled Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”

The consequences for ordinary Palestinians are concrete and documented. Israel maintains severe restrictions on essential supplies entering Gaza, including medical equipment, nutritionally diverse food, fuel, and reconstruction materials. These restrictions persist even as humanitarian agencies struggle to deliver lifesaving assistance. The January 2024 court order explicitly required Israel to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance,” a directive reiterated in the subsequent March and May rulings.

Meanwhile, the court’s orders on evidence preservation are also being flouted. Morayef described how: “By killing Palestinian media workers documenting its violations in Gaza and blocking international media, human rights investigators and UN-mandated bodies from accessing the Gaza Strip as well as denying the International Committee for the Red Cross access to Palestinian detainees despite a ruling of its own Supreme Court, Israel continues to mask the full horror of its unlawful conduct in Gaza and violates the ICJ’s order to preserve evidence related to allegations of acts of genocide.”

Amnesty also cited Israel’s failure to investigate or prosecute senior political figures who have made genocidal statements, and the continued spread of dehumanizing rhetoric by Israeli politicians, both of which the organization argues violate the court’s order to prevent and punish public incitement to genocide.

The ICJ’s May 24, 2024 order specifically called on Israel to “halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction.” Israel not only failed to comply but subsequently destroyed most of Rafah and imposed siege-like conditions across Gaza at various stages. Since the 2025 ceasefire, Israel has deliberately refused to implement measures necessary to reverse the devastating cumulative impacts of its actions.

The case, formally titled South Africa v. Israel, traces back to January 26, 2024, when the ICJ found that Palestinians in Gaza have a plausible right to protection from acts of genocide under the Genocide Convention. That finding obligated the court to indicate binding provisional measures to protect that right from irreparable harm.

Amnesty International is now calling on all states to pressure Israel to end violations of international law, implement the ICJ’s provisional measures, halt arms transfers and military assistance, and terminate trade and economic relations that contribute to the occupation of Palestinian territory. The organization specifically urged South Africa to suspend any trade agreements with Israel that contribute to human rights violations, including seaborne thermal coal shipments.

The question facing the international community is whether any of those calls will translate into action, or whether the pattern Morayef described, of states failing to enforce binding court orders while populations bear the consequences, will continue unchallenged.