Easter weekend marked one of the most intense moments so far of Israel’s war on Lebanon. At around 2pm on Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces bombed a densely populated, residential area near the Rafik Hariri University hospital, Lebanon’s largest public hospital, killing at least five people and wounding 50 others.
When I worked at the hospital in 2020, I treated the most vulnerable people in Lebanese society: migrant workers, stateless Palestinians, Syrian refugees. What happened on Sunday is consistent with what seems to be Israel’s broader strategy in Lebanon: human rights organisations and medical workers say the IDF is crippling healthcare infrastructure, targeting hospitals and medics, sometimes when they are sitting in ambulances or in first aid centres. Israel is also forcing the displacement of civilians on a large scale, rendering parts of the country unlivable, while Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that the two-week Iran ceasefire doesn’t apply to Lebanon tells us that this is far from over.
Israel is applying its Gaza tactics to Lebanon. The blueprint has proven effective. It renders normal the destruction of hospitals and medical equipment and simultaneously acts as a deterrent to people seeking medical care. According to Save the Children, there is an attack on healthcare facilities every six hours in the Middle East and wider region, indicating that hospitals themselves have been relegated to de facto war zones of their own.
Working alongside Palestinian healthcare workers in Gaza in 2023 and 2024, I saw extraordinary professional heroism. They spent marathon hours on call, pronouncing their own colleagues dead in the ER, then left work to scavenge for food and shelter during forced evacuations. The Israeli Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories vowed that al-Aqsa hospital, where we worked, and our guesthouse would remain untouched, or “deconflicted”. But slowly the war came closer. In January 2024, a bullet hit the intensive care unit’s walls. Shortly after I left, our guesthouse was bombed and most patients and medical workers were forced to leave the hospital following nearby evacuation orders. I still don’t know the fate of my child patients.
None of this compares with the atrocities that Palestinian healthcare workers endured. CNN has reported how in November 2023 medical staff were forced out of al-Nasr hospital, under Israeli military direction, with such urgency that babies were later found decomposing in beds. Since December 2024, the director of the Kamal Adwan hospital, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, has been detained; his lawyer said he had been tortured, beaten and denied medical treatment. In March 2025, the bodies of 15 paramedics and rescue workers were found in a mass grave, shot dead by Israeli forces, according to the UN.
Israel eluded consequences for this in Gaza and is now acting with impunity in Lebanon. According to the World Health Organization, more than 90 “attacks on healthcare” have been reported in Lebanon since 2 March, resulting in 137 injuries and 53 deaths. Perhaps just as devastating is patients believing that healthcare systems are no longer safe. Hospitals used to be sacrosanct. The new framework shifts a family’s calculus: is it worth the risk of going to a hospital to get our baby treated for his asthma attack, knowing Israel attacks hospitals?
The Israeli military claims that Hezbollah systematically exploits medical facilities in Lebanon for “terrorist activity”. It has not provided evidence for these claims. When I returned from Gaza, I was told by my NGO how to respond to this baseless accusation: simply by stating what I had seen, which is to say that there is no evidence to suggest that hospitals were being used as militant bases. But the more complete, more honourable answer is this: it does not matter one iota whether hospitals have dual use for military planning. Attacking a hospital is a crime, full stop. Doctors must treat patients without fear or favour. If a child is in cardiac arrest, I will not stop chest compressions to interrogate the political affiliations of her parents.
I have worked in Palestinian refugee camps for more than 20 years. In 2010, I treated patients in Shatila – site of the infamous 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre. There, I came across Fatima, a mother of three, who recalled walking over countless bodies after the massacres and finding her husband among those slain. I do not know where she is today, but I do know that as a stateless Palestinian she would not be eligible for medical care at the private hospitals in Lebanon. If she were in an ambulance, she could be at risk of being targeted. Her death would just be another statistic in high-level briefings that never translate into consequences for those perpetrating war crimes.
The precedent that has been set in Gaza and now Lebanon is a dangerous one for every future conflict to come. When even ambulances are fair game, the rules of engagement are being for ever distorted.
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Seema Jilani is a paediatric physician based in Texas and a member of the Council of Foreign Relations
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