Above photo: AFP / Getty Images.
Dr Hussam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, is among the healthcare workers still held by Israel.
At least 160 healthcare workers from Gaza, including more than 20 doctors, are believed to still be inside Israeli detention facilities where torture and rape are routine, The Guardian reported on 25 February.
According to Healthcare Workers Watch (HWW), a Palestinian medical NGO, 162 medical staff remain in Israeli detention, including some of Gaza’s most senior physicians, while 24 others remain missing after being abducted by Israeli forces from hospitals during the war. Another 179 were previously detained but have been released.
“Israel’s targeting of the healthcare workforce in this manner is having a devastating impact on the provision of healthcare to Palestinians, with extensive suffering, countless preventable deaths, and the effective eradication of whole medical specialties,” said HWW director Muath Alser.
The Guardian and Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) have also collected “detailed testimony from seven senior doctors who claimed they were taken from hospitals, ambulances and checkpoints in Gaza, illegally transferred across the border into Israeli-run prison facilities and subjected to months of torture, beatings, starvation, and inhumane treatment before being released without charge.”
Among the senior doctors detained by Israeli forces is Dr Hussam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, who was detained in December.
🚨 Doctors in Gaza who were kidnapped by Israel and put under arrest:
Dr. Ahmed Mhanna (425 days)
Dr. Mohammed Abu Musa (357 days)
Dr. Mohammed Obaid (75 days)
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya (45 days) pic.twitter.com/ef9XAe7j0z
— Ryan Rozbiani (@RyanRozbiani) February 17, 2025
A lawyer who visited the doctor in Ofer Prison in Ramallah said Abu Safia had been tortured, beaten, and denied medical treatment.
Dr Mohammed Abu Selmia, director of Al-Shifa Hospital, described to The Guardian how he was tortured by Israeli guards during his seven-month detention.
“I am talking about clubbing, being beaten with rifle butts, and being attacked by dogs. There was little to no food, no personal hygiene, no soap inside the cells, no water, no toilet, no toilet paper … I saw people who were dying there … I was beaten so badly I couldn’t use my legs or walk. No day passes without torture.”
Two prominent Palestinian doctors in Gaza, Dr Iyad al-Rantisi, a consultant obstetrician and gynecologist at Kamal Adwan Hospital, and Dr Adnan al-Bursh, head of the orthopedic department at Al-Shifa Hospital, died while in Israeli detention, presumably under torture.
In June, Haaretz reported that the Israeli military is investigating 48 deaths of Palestinians from Gaza who were in Israeli custody, including 36 who were imprisoned at the Sde Teiman detention center.
A CNN investigation one month before found that at Sde Teiman, “doctors sometimes amputated prisoners’ limbs due to injuries sustained from constant handcuffing; of medical procedures sometimes performed by underqualified medics earning it a reputation for being ‘a paradise for interns;’ and where the air is filled with the smell of neglected wounds left to rot.”
In August, a video emerged of a gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner by guards at Sde Teiman.
Al Jazeera reports that the “video shows the prisoner being selected from a larger group lying bound on the floor. The victim is then escorted to a wall, where guards, using their shields to hide their identity from the camera, proceed to rape him.”
In response to the video becoming public, prominent Israeli politicians and journalists defended the guards, saying that any action, including gang rape, is permissible in the war against Palestinians in Gaza.