Israel Blocking Gaza Cancer Patients From Travel to the West Bank for Life-Saving Treatment
(Washington, D.C., June 11, 2026) — Israel should stop blocking the medical evacuation of Palestinian cancer patients from Gaza to hospitals in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, a coalition of 62 members of Congress said in a letter sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio today. Since October 2023, Israel has blocked Gaza residents in need of life-saving medical treatment from going to Palestinian hospitals in the other part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
The letter, led by Representative James McGovern and Senators Ed Markey and Chris Van Hollen, was signed by 51 members of the House and 11 senators. DAWN worked with Congressional offices to develop and circulate the letter.
"There is no conceivable reason that allowing kids with cancer to drive 40 minutes for lifesaving medical treatment should be controversial. Such cruelty would not be possible without U.S. political cover, and we are grateful for the members of Congress who are demanding an end to it," said Deyar Jamil, a legal advisor at DAWN. "Hospitals in the West Bank are ready to receive children with cancer and other patients from Gaza; the Palestinian Authority and churches will even pay for their treatment. The only obstacle is that the occupying power refuses to let them pass, because they are Palestinian. The world has to apply pressure on Israel to end this now."
The letter urges the Trump administration to engage Qatar, Egypt, and Türkiye in a coordinated diplomatic effort to secure medical evacuations for every child with cancer in Gaza, together with their caregivers, and to obtain Israeli assurances that they will be allowed to return to Gaza. It also calls on Israel to facilitate the permanent reestablishment of the medical corridor between Gaza and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to stop impeding the rebuilding of hospitals and medical infrastructure in Gaza and to not again target them militarily.
More than 18,500 Palestinians require urgent medical care unavailable in Gaza, approximately 11,000 of whom have cancer. According to the World Health Organization, 94 percent of Gaza's hospitals have been damaged or destroyed amid Israel's assault on Gaza. Since October 2023, Israeli forces have deliberately attacked hospitals, medical personnel, ambulances and health infrastructure in Palestine, including destroying Gaza's only specialized cancer treatment facility, the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, despite having full control of the area. The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel found that Israel's attacks on health care amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity. More than 1,200 Palestinians have died waiting for evacuation approvals, including Ghazal, a six-year-old child with leukemia whose referral never came despite two months of waiting.
Israeli authorities have decimated Gaza's health care system through their years-long closure policy and its assault since October 2023. Israel's sweeping restrictions on the entry and distribution of food, water, aid, fuel, medicine and medical supplies underline its commission of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, the International Court of Justice's binding orders in a case in which it has found that the rights of Palestinians under the Genocide Convention are plausibly at risk and the International Criminal Court's arrest warrants against the sitting Israeli prime minister and former defense minister.
The continued denial of medical access for Palestinians in Gaza also marks another violation of the terms of the U.S.-brokered October 2025 ceasefire agreement, which provided for medical evacuation outside of Gaza.
Senate signers include Angela Alsobrooks, Maria Cantwell, Jeff Merkley, Patty Murray, Bernie Sanders, Tina Smith, Elizabeth Warren, Peter Welch, and Ron Wyden.
House signers include Becca Balint, Brendan Boyle, Julia Brownley, Andre Carson, Greg Casar, Sean Casten, Emanuel Cleaver, Steve Cohen, Jasmine Crockett, Danny Davis, Madeleine Dean, Diana DeGette, Rosa DeLauro, Christopher Deluzio, Mark DeSaulnier, Maxine Dexter, Debbie Dingell, Lloyd Doggett, Bill Foster, Valerie Foushee, Maxwell Frost, Jesus Garcia, Val Hoyle, Jonathan Jackson, Pramila Jayapal, Henry Johnson, Julie Johnson, Ro Khanna, Stephen Lynch, Seth Magaziner, Sarah McBride, Betty McCollum, LaMonica McIver, Kweisi Mfume, Dave Min, Gwen Moore, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Ilhan Omar, Chellie Pingree, Mike Quigley, Delia Ramirez, Jamie Raskin, Janice Schakowsky, Lateefah Simon, Mike Thompson, Rashida Tlaib, Paul Tonko, Derek Tran, Nydia Velazquez, and Bonnie Watson Coleman.
"Calling on Israel to do the right thing by allowing kids with cancer to access life-saving treatment in their own territory is good, but it is not enough," said Raed Jarrar, DAWN's advocacy director. "Depriving kids of access to treatment is only part of the story–through bombing, shooting, starving, forcibly displacing, and withholding medicine and aid, Israel is killing Palestinian kids everyday. The U.S. is deeply complicit in these grave abuses. Members of Congress should support taking concrete action to end that complicity."
Israel's denial of medical care to Palestinians in Gaza is part of a systematic pattern of gross human rights violations at the center of Gaza v. Rubio, a federal lawsuit DAWN supports, challenging the State Department for refusing to enforce with regards to Israel the Leahy Law, which prohibits U.S. military assistance to foreign security force units credibly believed to have committed gross violations of human rights.
One of the thirteen Palestinian and Palestinian-American plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit is a Palestinian with cancer, who was officially referred for urgent chemotherapy and radiation unavailable in Gaza, but blocked from travel by Israel. The Israeli military unit blocking her access to treatment, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), is also named in the congressional letter.
The lawsuit contends that the State Department has unlawfully created an "Israel exception" to the Leahy Law, vetting Israeli units through a one-of-a-kind process designed to never find an Israeli unit ineligible for assistance, despite the State Department's own human rights reporting documenting grave violations. In 27 years, the State Department barred 113 units across dozens of countries, but never a single Israeli unit, despite its sitting prime minister being wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. If the United States enforced the law as Congress wrote it, they argue, Israeli units like COGAT would have a powerful incentive to change their policies, including by facilitating access outside of Gaza to life-saving medical treatment.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in D.C. in December 2024. In November 2025, the judge denied "as moot without prejudice" the anticipated motion to dismiss. In February 2026, plaintiffs filed an amended complaint, which the government again moved to dismiss in May 2026. Today, the plaintiffs filed their opposition to the government's motion to dismiss the case. A ruling on the possibility of jurisdictional discovery and on the motion to dismiss is expected later this year.
