Oliver Mizzi
The New Arab / August 6, 2026
Around 75% of the Palestinian Health Ministry’s 590 service branches are now only functioning one or two days a week, straining health services in the West Bank
London – Israel is conducting a “systematic erosion” of the occupied West Bank’s healthcare system, aid agencies and rights groups told The New Arab, as its withholding of tax revenue to the Palestinian Authority (PA) sees healthcare centre closures, medicine stocks run low, and preventable deaths.
Of the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s 590 service branches, 447 are now only functioning one or two days a week, representing 75% of all branches, Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) said in a report published on Thursday.
Moreover, 63% of all primary healthcare centres remain partially operational through 2025, many operating one day a week, down from six days a week before October 2023.
Milena Ansari, the Director of the Occupied Palestinian Territory Department at PHRI and author of the paper, told The New Arab that there has been a near doubling of the use of its clinics in the territory as a result of the service closures.
“We’re increasingly seeing patients with chronic illnesses who should be receiving routine care through the public healthcare system but no longer can, and more Palestinian refugee patients forcibly displaced from northern West Bank refugee camps, who used to rely on UNRWA services,” she said.
PHRI said its mobile clinics used to see around 200 to 300 patients a day. The average use has since climbed to 400 to 500 patients a day since the beginning of 2024, with its mobile clinic in Kufor al-Ra’i, Jenin, seeing 765 patients in a single day on 6 June 2026, and its clinic in Burqa, Nablus, seeing 615 patients.
“What we’re witnessing is the systematic erosion of a healthcare system that patients and healthcare workers depend on to survive and live with dignity.”
Restrictions on funding and services ‘lead to preventable deaths’
The healthcare crisis comes as Israel further restricts the PA’s access to its own tax revenue, which Israel collects on its behalf as part of the 1994 Paris Protocol that was later included in the Oslo II Accords.
These restrictions began following the outbreak of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, with Tel Aviv withholding portions of the tax revenue in what the World Bank said amounted to around NIS (New Israeli Shekels) 500 million per month.
This has only increased in the succeeding years, in a crisis that has seen PA President Mahmoud Abbas request the activation of a special mechanism of the Arab League to secure funds in mid-July.
The lack of funding has in turn knocked onto health service provision, with PHRI saying in its report that healthcare workers are only receiving partial salaries, including after significant delays. Healthcare workers went on strike on 9 May as a result, though have since gone back to work.
Alongside reduced pay and service provision, medical supplies are also running out, with 160 essential medicines out of 1,260 now out of stock. Around 250 remain in limited quantities, while a further 600 are days away from being out of stock.
The lack of medication, reduction in services, tightening Israeli restrictions and obstruction of emergency response teams are impacting access to healthcare across the occupied West Bank.
“These are precisely the conditions that drive deterioration in health, interrupt lifesaving treatment and ultimately lead to preventable deaths,” Ansari told The New Arab, adding that “unfortunately, many of these deaths will be difficult to track because they’re often silent deaths”.
“They happen when a diabetic patient cannot obtain insulin, a cancer patient misses months of treatment, or someone suffering a heart attack can’t reach a hospital in time.”
She added that patients were carrying a “constant psychological burden” of wondering if they’ll be able to get treatment for long-term and serious conditions, or having to choose between buying food or paying for treatment.
According to PHRI, the conditions have put three-quarters of households in the West Bank below the standard of living, while the PA is now lumbered with a debt burden of $1.18 billion to private hospitals and pharmaceutical suppliers.
“A healthcare system doesn’t suddenly collapse when deaths are counted,” Amiri explained. “It fails long before, when patients lose timely access to medicines, specialists and emergency care.”
Not a ‘budget dispute’
Israeli ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have long called for the collapse of the PA as part of efforts to formally annex the occupied West Bank.
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who administers the West Bank as part of his additional role in the Defence Ministry and publicly advocates the West Bank’s annexation, is the primary minister involved in stifling funding to the PA.
He has previously said he intends to collapse the PA through “economic strangulation.”
Ansari said that the international community “must stop treating this as a technical budget dispute or a temporary fiscal crisis”.
“It’s the foreseeable result of Israeli policies that weaponize Palestinian clearance funds,” she said, adding “it’s collective punishment with devastating consequences for Palestinian patients.”
She called for states to take “meaningful action” to get Israel to end its illegal occupation of the West Bank and policy of dismantling Palestinian institutions.
The findings of PHRI’s report were corroborated by Aseel Baidoun, Deputy Director of Advocacy and Campaigns at Medical Aid for Palestinians, a UK-based charity that operates medical services for Palestinians across Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and whom have also been warning of the collapse of the health care system in the West Bank.
Baidoun labelled Israel’s policy as “the systemic dismantling of the conditions necessary for Palestinians to access healthcare and live in dignity”.
“These are not isolated failures; they are the foreseeable consequences of policies that systematically deprive Palestinians of the resources required to realise their right to health,” she added.
Like Ansari, Baidoun also called on the international community to go further than providing humanitarian responses to the crisis, which has seen commitments from international states to help fund the PA.
“The international community must move beyond humanitarian responses alone and ensure Israel is held accountable for its obligations under international law, including its duty to protect the health and welfare of the occupied population,” Baidoun said.
Oliver Mizzi is a British journalist based in London
