On Saturday, 81 healthcare workers outside the World Medical Association’s general assembly in Rotterdam took off their scrubs and hung them in a line facing the venue, Al Jazeera reported. Each garment carried the name of a Palestinian healthcare worker currently held in what Al Jazeera describes as illegal Israeli detention. Hundreds of doctors gathered in total, demanding the WMA suspend the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) — the national physicians’ body that holds Israel’s seat in the federation — over what they call its silence as Palestinian healthcare is systematically destroyed.
The WMA is the umbrella body for national medical associations worldwide, which makes suspension one of the few formal sanctions the medical profession can apply to one of its own. Pressure on it has been building for months: Common Dreams reports that thousands of healthcare workers globally are backing the call, citing the killing and detention of medical professionals in Gaza and the destruction of the territory’s health system. According to the Hind Rajab Foundation, more than 1,300 health professionals and organisations signed a petition published in The Lancet in June 2026 urging the IMA’s suspension; the foundation timed a separate ICC complaint over alleged medical complicity in the torture of Palestinian detainees to the Rotterdam meeting, where IMA delegates sit among the assembly.
The number on the line in Rotterdam — 81 — is the protesters’ own count: one scrub for each named detainee. Whether the WMA’s member associations put suspension on the agenda is the decision the assembly has yet to show it will take.