HRF Files ICC Complaint Against Israeli Medical Association, Doctors, and Officials Over Role in Sde Teiman Torture

8 October 2026 – Brussels, Belgium/Rotterdam, the Netherlands – The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) has filed a communication under Article 15 of the Rome Statute with the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) calling for an investigation into the involvement of Israeli Ministry of Health and Ministry of Defense officials, the Israeli Medical Association, medical professionals, and hospital administrators in the death, torture, and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees held at the Sde Teiman detention facility since 7 October 2023.

The submission argues that the conduct documented in the filing amounts to war crimes under Articles 8(2)(a)(i)–(iii) and 8(2)(b)(xxi), crimes against humanity under Article 7(1)(a), (f), (h), and (k), and acts of genocide under Article 6(a) and (b) of the Rome Statute.

Medical Ethics in Rotterdam: The WMA Faces Its Own Test

The filing was timed by HRF to coincide with the convening of the World Medical Association (WMA) General Assembly in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, from 7 to 10 October 2026.

The Israeli Medical Association (IMA) represents over 90% of physicians in Israel, including Israeli doctors assigned to work at Sde Teiman, and is a founding member of the WMA. IMA leadership also holds positions within the WMA’s governing structures with IMA President Professor Zion Hagay chairing the WMA’s Socio-Medical Affairs Committee and IMA Chief Executive Officer Advocate Leah Wapner serving in several advisory roles, including on the WMA’s Finance and Planning, Socio-Medical Affairs, and Medical Ethics Committees.

The WMA General Assembly is convening to debate medical ethics while members of the IMA, which has provided institutional cover for torture and medical abuse of Palestinian detainees, sit among its delegates with impunity. The meeting also comes amid growing pressure on the WMA to act, with more than 1,300 health professionals and organizations calling on the WMA to suspend the IMA in a petition published in The Lancet in June 2026.

The Sde Teiman Field Hospital: Medical Complicity in a System of Torture

Since October 2023, Sde Teiman, a military base in the Negev desert, was used to detain thousands of Palestinians from Gaza, the majority of whom were civilians, including men, women, children, the elderly, journalists, and healthcare and humanitarian workers. The detainees were held under the invented designation of “unlawful combatants,” a legal fiction used to strip detainees of basic legal protections and enabling their detention without charge or trial.

Just over a week after 7 October 2023, the Israeli Ministry of Health established a medical facility inside the Sde Teiman detention complex. What began as a medical tent was expanded into a field hospital consisting of tents with between eight and twenty beds each, built without tender by K.L.P. Global Ltd., an Israeli private company that also exports ‘defense’ systems.

Despite the fact that the field hospital was operating inside a military detention complex, it remained under the auspices of the Israeli Ministry of Health. However, its medical staff, including civilian doctors called up as reservists and volunteers, were required to sign documents placing them under the authority of Israel’s Military Police rather than its Medical Corps.

Inside Sde Teiman Detention Center. Credit: Breaking the Silence

On 19 December 2023, Israel’s Ministry of Health issued a directive that formally integrated the medical facility into Sde Teiman’s system of torture and abuse, imposing the following requirements: 

• Instructing medical staff to treat detainees while handcuffed and blindfolded;
• Prohibiting staff from identifying themselves by name and requiring them to sign medical records using only professional titles. (This practice obscures individual medical responsibility and prevents injuries sustained in custody from being documented in an accountable clinical record subject to legal scrutiny);
• Restricting transfers to civilian hospitals to cases involving an imminent threat to life or risk of irreversible disability; and,
• Authorizing forced medical treatment without safeguards or protections.

Physicians, nurses, and paramedics who served at the field hospital, together with former detainees, have documented the abuses carried out within this system.

In April 2024, a doctor who worked at Sde Teiman wrote to the Israeli Attorney General and Ministers of Defense and Health, reporting that two detainees had undergone leg amputations within a single week as a result of injuries caused by shackling, which he described as routine.

Medical workers also informed the Associated Press that they witnessed surgeries performed without adequate pain management, including on an elderly detainee who underwent leg surgery while “screaming and shaking.” Others described detainees forced to wear diapers, bound by all four limbs to hospital beds, and blindfolded.

By November 2025, at least 29 detainees had died at Sde Teiman as a result of physical violence, medical neglect, or both. 

The Israeli Medical Association: Legitimizing a System of Torture 

The submission devotes a chapter specifically to the role of the IMA in legitimizing the abuse and torture carried out at Sde Teiman.

The IMA’s response to allegations of medical complicity has been limited to generic reminders of physicians’ ethical obligations, while the findings of an internal ethical assessment conducted by the Ministry of Health following a visit to Sde Teiman have never been disclosed.

Rather than investigate the allegations, IMA leadership publicly defended the medical care provided at Sde Teiman.

On 24 April 2024, IMA President Professor Zion Hagay, IMA Ethics Board Chair Dr. Yossi Walfisch, and Malke Borow of the IMA Division of Law and Policy published a letter in The American Journal of Bioethics asserting that detainees at Sde Teiman were “receiving appropriate medical care.” The letter also referred to Palestinian detainees who had neither been tried nor convicted as “Hamas terrorists;” and, it specifically invoked Walfisch’s own visit to Sde Teiman as evidence:

“One of us [Walfisch] has visited the IDF medical  facility as part of a delegation of medical ethics and professional experts and can attest to the fact that the prisoners there are receiving appropriate medical care within the necessary precautions taken to ensure the safety of the medical staff.”

The letter’s assurances directly contradict standards reaffirmed by the IMA’s own Ethics Bureau in September 2023, where it reiterated that routine restraint during medical treatment is prohibited, specifically identifying cross-binding, plastic restraints, and covering patients' eyes.

The IMA initiated no disciplinary proceedings against members implicated in conduct violating its code of ethics. Instead, its leadership used an international bioethics journal to evade accountability and obscure practices Israeli physicians, whistleblowers, former detainees, and UN investigators have documented as torture and medical abuse.

Individual Criminal Responsibility

The Article 15 submission calls on the ICC Prosecutor to investigate a chain of responsibility extending from senior political officials who designed the policy and officials who issued binding directives, to the military commanders, medical professionals, and professional bodies that implemented or legitimized the system.

Those identified include former Ministers of Health Moshe Arbel and Uriel Buso, IMA President Professor Zion Hagay, IMA Chief Executive Officer Advocate Leah Wapner, and IMA Ethics Board Chair Dr. Yosef Walfisch, among others named in the communication.

 Dyab Abou Jahjah, Director General at HRF:

“This week, the Israeli medical establishment takes its seat at the World Medical Association General Assembly in Rotterdam as though nothing has happened. The same association that called the torture of Palestinian detainees “appropriate medical care” now sits among delegates debating medical ethics. Israeli physicians abandoned their neutrality when they agreed to treat patients in chains and erase what was done to them . The WMA must answer why an association that provided institutional cover for torture is still welcome at its table.”

Natacha Bracq, Head of Litigation at HRF:

“The evidence shows that medical participation in torture and abuse at Sde Teiman was structural. The Israeli Ministry of Health built the field hospital, dictated the terms of medical treatment; doctors served under Military Police authority rather than the Medical Corps; and a professional association provided ethical cover. The medical system kept detainees alive to endure further torture and interrogation while ensuring their injuries could not be traced through clinical records. HRF’s Article 15 submission calls on the ICC Prosecutor to investigate this system for what it is: a chain of complicity in torture extending from government ministers to practicing physicians.”

The WMA and national medical associations also have been notified and received a copy of HRF's Article 15 Communication.

Today’s submission is only the beginning. 

HRF is preparing files on Israeli medical professionals with dual nationalities who participated directly in Israel's genocide in Gaza. We will bring each case before national prosecutors in every jurisdiction where these individuals hold citizenship.