Gaza Health Ministry

Palestinian Ministry of Health (Gaza Strip)
Agency overview
Jurisdiction	Gaza Strip
Headquarters	Gaza city
Agency executive	Medhat Abbas, Director-general;
Parent agency	Hamas Authority

The Gaza Health Ministry is a government agency in the Gaza Strip of the Palestinian territories.

History

The Palestinian territories (the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) used to be served by a single government ministry of health. Following Hamas' takeover of Gaza in 2007, the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip has appointed its own alternate health ministers than those in the West Bank.

Following the 2007 Hamas takeover of Gaza, a month-long doctors' strike ensued due to political disputes. The new Gaza government, with Basem Naim as Health Minister, replaced Fatah-affiliated hospital directors and staff with Hamas loyalists. Jomaa Alsaqqa, a 20-year surgeon at al-Shifa Hospital, lost his job due to his Fatah support and faced arrests and assaults since the Hamas takeover.[1]

The current director-general of the Gaza Health Ministry is Medhat Abbas.[2]

Reliability

As of 26 October 2023, the Health Ministry remained the sole source of data on Palestinian casualties during the 2023 Israel-Hamas war.[3] Following heavily disputed initial casualty reports made in the immediate aftermath of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion, the Ministry was subjected to accusations of inflating casualty figures.[4]

Former Reuters regional bureau chief Luke Baker said that the Ministry’s death tolls used to be trustworthy, but no longer so and “any health official stepping out of line and not giving the death tolls that Hamas wants reported to journalists risks serious consequences.”[5] Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani later accused the Ministry of spreading “propaganda”, while US President Joe Biden stated he had "no confidence" in the casualty numbers being reported. [6][7]

In response to these accusations, Omar Shakir of the Human Rights Watch, argued that "figures from the Gaza Health Ministry because those are generally proven to be reliable" arguing that:[8]

The HRW had conducted independent investigations for certain airstrike and arrived at numbers similar to those of the Gaza Health Ministry's.
HRW has looked at satellite imagery, and the number of buildings destroyed is consistent with the high casualty count reported by GHM.
the Gaza Health Ministry carefully documents the names of all the dead, and the dead are well known in Gaza's "tightly-knit" communities.

The Washington Post also stated that the figures provided by the ministry are considered reliable by many experts.[9] Shakir noted a grey area in differentiating combatants from civilians among the dead.[10] He also noted that the reliability of immediately released figures can be different from those based on recorded data.[10]

List of ministers of health

#	Name	Party	Time in office
1	Basem Naim[1]	Hamas	June 2007–January 2009
2	Mufiz al-Makhalalati	Hamas	April 2009 – Unknown
3	Medhat Abbas	Hamas	Unknown – Present

References

Merav, Sarig (3 November 2007). "Striking medics in Gaza temporarily return to work after talks with Hamas". National Institutes of Health. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
Daniel, Ari (13 October 2023). "Doctors in Gaza describe the war's devastating impact on health care — and civilians". NPR. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
David, Folkenflik. "News outlets backtrack on Gaza blast after relying on Hamas as key source". NPR.org. National Public Radio.
"Italian minister disputes death toll of Gaza hospital blast". Reuters.com. Reuters. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
Barnes, Joe. "Death tolls from Hamas-run health ministry are not trustworthy, former Reuters chief warns". Telegraph.co.uk. The Telegraph UK. Retrieved 26 October 2023. "Hamas has now been in charge of Gaza for 16 years. It has squeezed the life out of honesty and probity. Any health official stepping out of line and not giving the death tolls that Hamas wants reported to journalists risks serious consequences. I'm not denying there are civilians being killed. At all, including many children. That's verifiable. What is not verifiable are the numbers that emerge throughout the day from Gaza of new death tolls — 700 killed in the last 24 hours, 500 killed in the Ahli hospital car park blast, 5,000 killed since October 8. Hamas has a clear propaganda incentive to inflate civilian casualties as much as possible. There was a time when the figures from the ministry could be relied upon. The doctors and administrators knew what they were doing."
"Italian minister disputes death toll of Gaza hospital blast". Reuters.com. Reuters. Retrieved 26 October 2023. " The Gaza health ministry has put the death toll at 471. An Israeli official has said the toll appeared to be "several dozen". A U.S. intelligence report estimated the number of those killed to be "probably at the low end of the 100 to 300 spectrum". "We need to avoid the negative impact of propaganda. Because that missile, which was said to have caused 500 deaths - in reality it was around 50 people - and which inflamed Arab masses in big cities, was not however launched by Israel," Tajani told the Sky TG24 news channel."
Dobkin, Rachel. "Biden Accuses Palestinians of Lying About Civilian Death Tolls". Newsweek.com. Newsweek. Retrieved 26 October 2023. What they say to me is that I have no notion the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many are killed ... I'm sure innocents have been killed and it's the price of waging a war ... The Israelis should be incredibly careful to be sure that they're focusing on going after the folks that are propagating this war against Israel and it's against their interest when that doesn't happen but I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.
Harb, Ali. "Gaza death toll from health ministry is 'reliable': Rights expert". Aljazeera.com. Al Jazeera. Retrieved 26 October 2023. "Human Rights Watch has been working in the occupied Palestinian territories for three decades. We've covered rounds of escalations and hostilities, and we've always found the numbers from the Ministry of Health to be generally reliable."
Taylor, Adam (24 October 2023). "Why news outlets and the U.N. rely on Gaza's Health Ministry for death tolls". Washington Post. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
McGreal, Chris (26 October 2023). "Can we trust casualty figures from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry?". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 October 2023.

External links

Official website of the Health Ministry
Health Ministry news feed (including casualty lists)

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[NIH2007-1] Merav, Sarig (3 November 2007). "Striking medics in Gaza temporarily return to work after talks with Hamas". National Institutes of Health. Retrieved 20 October 2023.

[2] Daniel, Ari (13 October 2023). "Doctors in Gaza describe the war's devastating impact on health care — and civilians". NPR. Retrieved 18 October 2023.

[3] David, Folkenflik. "News outlets backtrack on Gaza blast after relying on Hamas as key source". NPR.org. National Public Radio.

[4] "Italian minister disputes death toll of Gaza hospital blast". Reuters.com. Reuters. Retrieved 26 October 2023.

[5] Barnes, Joe. "Death tolls from Hamas-run health ministry are not trustworthy, former Reuters chief warns". Telegraph.co.uk. The Telegraph UK. Retrieved 26 October 2023. "Hamas has now been in charge of Gaza for 16 years. It has squeezed the life out of honesty and probity. Any health official stepping out of line and not giving the death tolls that Hamas wants reported to journalists risks serious consequences. I'm not denying there are civilians being killed. At all, including many children. That's verifiable. What is not verifiable are the numbers that emerge throughout the day from Gaza of new death tolls — 700 killed in the last 24 hours, 500 killed in the Ahli hospital car park blast, 5,000 killed since October 8. Hamas has a clear propaganda incentive to inflate civilian casualties as much as possible. There was a time when the figures from the ministry could be relied upon. The doctors and administrators knew what they were doing."

[6] "Italian minister disputes death toll of Gaza hospital blast". Reuters.com. Reuters. Retrieved 26 October 2023. " The Gaza health ministry has put the death toll at 471. An Israeli official has said the toll appeared to be "several dozen". A U.S. intelligence report estimated the number of those killed to be "probably at the low end of the 100 to 300 spectrum". "We need to avoid the negative impact of propaganda. Because that missile, which was said to have caused 500 deaths - in reality it was around 50 people - and which inflamed Arab masses in big cities, was not however launched by Israel," Tajani told the Sky TG24 news channel."

[7] Dobkin, Rachel. "Biden Accuses Palestinians of Lying About Civilian Death Tolls". Newsweek.com. Newsweek. Retrieved 26 October 2023. What they say to me is that I have no notion the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many are killed ... I'm sure innocents have been killed and it's the price of waging a war ... The Israelis should be incredibly careful to be sure that they're focusing on going after the folks that are propagating this war against Israel and it's against their interest when that doesn't happen but I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.

[8] Harb, Ali. "Gaza death toll from health ministry is 'reliable': Rights expert". Aljazeera.com. Al Jazeera. Retrieved 26 October 2023. "Human Rights Watch has been working in the occupied Palestinian territories for three decades. We've covered rounds of escalations and hostilities, and we've always found the numbers from the Ministry of Health to be generally reliable."

[9] Taylor, Adam (24 October 2023). "Why news outlets and the U.N. rely on Gaza's Health Ministry for death tolls". Washington Post. Retrieved 25 October 2023.

[guardian-10] McGreal, Chris (26 October 2023). "Can we trust casualty figures from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry?". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 October 2023.