As the World Medical Association (WMA) prepares to convene its general assembly in Rotterdam, the Netherlands this October, mounting international pressure has emerged calling for the suspension of the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) from the global medical body, driven by a grassroots petition that has gathered more than 1,300 signatures from medical professionals and health organizations worldwide.
Organized by a coalition of global health advocacy groups — including The People’s Health Movement, Dutch-based Doctors for Gaza (Artsen voor Gaza), and the health division of Jewish Voice for Peace — the petition accuses the IMA of failing to uphold fundamental medical ethical principles enshrined in the WMA’s own Geneva and Tokyo Declarations. The document further alleges that the IMA is complicit in what signatories call widespread violations of medical neutrality and international human rights carried out by the Israeli government and military.
Beyond its core accusations regarding ethical failures, the petition outlines multiple specific grievances against the IMA. It documents that Israeli military forces have launched targeted attacks on healthcare infrastructure across Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran, resulting in the death of health workers, arbitrary detention of medical staff, and systemic obstruction of care delivery. Signatories also argue that over the past three decades, Israeli medical professionals have been complicit in inhumane treatment of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons, through their consistent refusal to document or investigate documented violations of medical ethics in detention facilities. The petition adds that decades of Israeli occupation and what signatories term apartheid policies have left Palestinian populations with drastically inferior access to health services compared to Israeli citizens.
In a particularly pointed allegation, the petition argues that the IMA has not taken any public stance against the killing and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, nor against the near-total destruction of Gaza’s already fragile healthcare system. In fact, the petition claims that by publicly endorsing a 2023 statement signed by 80 Israeli doctors that openly called for the bombing of Gaza’s hospitals, the IMA effectively gave institutional approval to actions that constitute genocide. Signatories point to two prominent national medical bodies — the South African Medical Association and the British Medical Association — that have already cut formal ties with the IMA, and call on the WMA to follow this same path ahead of its October general assembly.
The accusations gained broader visibility after the leading medical journal *The Lancet* published an analysis of the petition in recent days. The journal’s reporting confirmed that the IMA has failed to release any public statement that condemns Israeli attacks on Gaza’s health system, criticizes Israeli military conduct during the ongoing conflict, calls for an immediate ceasefire, or acknowledges United Nations reports warning of ongoing genocide against Palestinians.
In its official response to *The Lancet*, the IMA rejected all accusations, asserting that its members consistently adhere to global medical ethical standards. The organization characterized the claims against it as “at worst, lies and at best, highly contested allegations presented as fact.” It further argued that the call for expulsion incorrectly conflates the actions of a sovereign government with an independent national medical association, warning that this sets a “extremely dangerous precedent” for global medical collaboration.
For its part, the WMA has also pushed back against the suspension call, telling *The Lancet* that removing the IMA would not advance the goals of peace, improved access to healthcare, or the protection of human rights globally. Instead, the global body argued that suspension would undermine decades of cross-border scientific collaboration, weaken open international medical dialogue, and create a harmful precedent that allows political pressure campaigns to isolate health care workers solely on the basis of their nationality.