Twenty months after the current campaign of violence began in Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian health care workers remain unlawfully detained or disappeared in Israel’s prison system, say medical staff and aid organizations who call it a violation of international humanitarian law that exacerbates the territory’s already-worsening health care crisis.

More than two dozen civil society organizations — including medical groups whose doctors were taken by Israeli forces — signed a statement Monday demanding the immediate and unconditional release of health workers, as well as an end to the seemingly arbitrary detentions and wider attacks on Gaza’s health care system.

“Instead of protection, hundreds of health workers have been forcibly removed from hospital wards and patient bedsides and subjected to prolonged detention in Israeli prisons and military camps,” the joint statement said. “The conditions of many of those still detained remain unknown. Many of those released have reported severe abuse, while some have died in custody.”

Israeli forces have killed more than 1,500 Palestinian health care workers and 460 aid workers since October 2023, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. The military has also detained at least 300 health workers in Gaza and 239 in the West Bank over the same time period, according to the World Health Organization. As of February, aid organizations believe there are at least 185 Palestinian health care workers who remain unlawfully detained.

“These healthcare workers are not combatants, they are not criminals, and they are not mere statistics. They have families and they play life-saving roles in their communities,” Joseph Belliveau, executive director of the Chicago-based aid group MedGlobal, said in a Monday statement. 

“Detaining and harming these dedicated health workers, without justification or explanation, is inhumane and illegal,” he continued. “Every day that my colleagues remain detained without charge or due process sends a reverberating message that civilian medics are legitimate targets.”

A spokesperson for the Israeli Prison Service did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment, though Israeli officials frequently justify kidnapping Palestinian medical workers by accusing them, without citing evidence, of working with Hamas. 

Among them is Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, MedGlobal’s lead physician in Gaza, who made headlines in December after Israeli soldiers forcibly took him from Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north. Abu Safiya remains at Ofer Prison in the West Bank, where he’s allegedly faced severe abuse and torture at the hands of Israeli security forces. He has still not been charged with a crime, according to Gaza human rights group Al Mezan.

“The Israeli government has a brutal record of abusing and torturing its civilian detainees. The horrors that take place in Israeli detention centers are well known and documented,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Monday. “Our government and the nations of the world must pressure the Israeli government to immediately release Dr. Abu Safiya and all others held unjustly by Israel.”

Last year, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem released a detailed reportfinding that Israeli prisons have essentially been turned into a network of torture camps, with current and former Palestinian detainees — including health workers — testifying to the extreme abuse, deep humiliation and inhumane sanitary conditions behind closed doors. 

Al Mezan said that Israel’s actions violate the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and a United Nations human rights commission in October declared that the attacks on Gaza’s health care system amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Many in the international community — including some in the U.N. — have concluded that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.

“With the current infrastructure damage at every level, the practice of medicine is under attack by Israel,” Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to health, said on Saturday. “The attacks, harassment and killings of hundreds of health care workers, destruction of health facilities and humanitarian organizations continue to catapult this genocide to proportions yet to be fully quantified.”