CAIRO (AP) – Under a ceasefire agreement in Gaza, Israel has released dozens of doctors, nurses, paramedics and other medical personnel detained in a hospital attack. However, more than 100 people remain in Israeli prisons, including Dr. Hossam Abu Safiyah. hospital director He became the face of the struggle to continue treating patients under Israeli siege and shelling.
Despite widespread calls for his release, Abu Safiyah was not among the hundreds of Palestinian detainees and prisoners released on Monday in exchange for 20 hostages held by Hamas. Abu Safiyah, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, has been imprisoned by Israel for nearly 10 months without charge.
Health Workers Watch, which tracks detention conditions in Gaza, said 55 health workers, including 31 doctors and nurses, were on the list of Gaza detainees to be released on Monday, but could not immediately confirm that all had been released. The group said at least 115 medical workers were still being held in addition to the bodies of four people who died in Israeli prisons, where human rights groups and witnesses have reported frequent abuses.
Support staff at Al Awda Hospital carried the director, Ahmed Muhanna, who had been held in Israeli custody for about 22 months since his release, on their shoulders. seized in a raid At the end of 2023 at a facility in northern Gaza.
“Al-Awda Hospital will be repaired and its staff will rebuild it with their own hands. … I am proud of what we have done and what we will do,” Muhanna told well-wishers, looking noticeably more grim than before his arrest, according to a video posted on social media.
Al Awda Hospital, damaged in multiple attacks in the largely flattened Jabaliya refugee camp, has been closed since May. When you are forced to evacuate During Israel’s recent attacks.
Israel’s two-year campaign to destroy Hamas after its attack on October 7, 2023 destroyed Gaza’s medical systemMost hospitals have been forced to close, with many severely damaged, even as staff struggle to treat those wounded by waves of shelling amid a shortage of supplies. During the war, Israeli forces raided many hospitals, raided others, and detained hundreds of staff members.
Israel claims it targeted the hospital because Hamas used it for military purposes, a claim denied by Palestinian health authorities.
Abu Safiyah
It is unclear whether Abu Safiyah, 52, will be released yet. Israeli officials did not respond to requests for comment. “There are no confirmed details regarding his release date,” his family said on social media, adding that released detainees described him as “healthy and well.”
The Israeli military said Abu Safiyah was being investigated on suspicion of collaborating with or acting on behalf of Hamas. Staff and international aid organizations who worked with him denied the claims. In November 2023, the Israeli military detained Dr. Mohammed Abu Selmiya, director of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, after identifying him as a Hamas employee, but released him seven months later.
Pediatrician Abu Safiya heads Kamal Adwan Hospital. 85-day siege of the facility It was carried out by Israeli forces during attacks in the surrounding areas of Jabaliya, Beit Rahiya and Beit Hanoun.
when in the army Attacked a hospital on December 27thimages showed Abu Safiyah, wearing a white coat, walking out of the building through a street of rubble and toward an Israeli armored vehicle to discuss evacuation of patients. Abu Safiyah and dozens of others, including patients and staff, were taken prisoner.
Dr. Saeed Salah, the medical director of Gaza City’s Patient Friends Hospital, who has known Abu Safiyah for 29 years, said Abu Safiyah “was at the hospital until the last moment. He did not leave the hospital. He did not leave the hospital because if he left, all medical services would collapse. Dr. Hossam is a truly great person.”
surviving siege
During the siege, Abu Safiyah repeatedly rejected military calls to close the hospital and evacuate. He frequently posted videos on social media showing his staff struggling to treat waves of injured Palestinians. He appealed for international aid as the hospital ran out of supplies and reported that Israeli attacks on the building had left patients and staff dead and injured and damaged wards.
In October 2024, one of his sons, Ibrahim, died at the entrance of a hospital in a drone attack.
“I refused to leave the hospital and sacrifice patients, so the military punished me by killing my son,” he said tearfully in a video afterwards.
The following month, Abu Safiyah was injured by shrapnel from a drone explosion as he sat in his office.
“Even with the wounds, he was going around among the patients. … He was sleeping, eating and drinking among the patients,” said Dr. Lana Sobaugh, nutritional technology consultant at MedGlobal, a US medical aid organization.
Abu Safiyah took over as director of the hospital in late 2023 after his predecessor, Dr. Ahmed Karut, was captured in an Israeli military raid. Mr. Karut is also detained in Israel on suspicion of being a member of Hamas, but it is unclear whether he has been charged.
Since taking over as director, Abu Safiyah has worked to rebuild the severely damaged hospital, restoring its intensive care unit and pediatric ward. Sobo worked with him to establish a malnutrition ward, which has treated hundreds of children.
He is “a wonderful doctor,” she said. “He built things out of nothing.”
raid
On December 27, troops surrounded the compound. Abu Safiyah’s son Elias, who is hospitalized, said his father went out to speak with police officers, then returned and asked them to gather all patients, staff and family members in the courtyard. Some were evacuated to other hospitals, while others were detained.
MedGlobal President Zaher Tharoor said the military destroyed the hospital’s radiology department and operating room and destroyed ventilators.
The Israeli military said it launched the raid after warning staff multiple times about Hamas fighters it said were operating from the hospital.
Elias said Abu Safiyah’s 74-year-old mother died a few days after he was taken into custody.
“She hasn’t stopped crying since she was detained,” he said.
imprisonment
Abu Safiyah is currently being held in Israel’s Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli rights group Physicians for Human Rights, which visited him in September, said he had not been brought before a judge or questioned and had no information about why he had been detained.
The group said Abu Safiyah and other detainees were not receiving adequate food or medical care, adding that they had lost about 25 kilograms (55 pounds) since being detained. He said guards reported regularly beating prisoners during cell searches.
Freelance journalist Islam Mohammed was detained along with Abu Safiyah in the attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital. At one point, he was detained at Ofer at the same time as Abu Safiyah, but in a separate cell, where he and other detainees were reportedly frequently beaten and guards shouted abuse at them.
Mohammed, who was released to Gaza on Monday, said his treatment was inhumane from the time he was detained until he was released. “Calling it a beating doesn’t describe it,” he said.
Israeli authorities say they follow legal standards in the treatment of prisoners and that violations by prison staff will be investigated.
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Associated Press correspondent Sarah El Deeb in Cairo and Sam Mednick in Jerusalem contributed.
