For the previous 14 months, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya has confronted Israel’s conflict on Gaza’s well being care system head-on, documenting to the world his struggle as a doctor to deal with sufferers and maintain his hospital within the north afloat regardless of fixed bombardment, depleted humanitarian assist, a painful shrapnel damage and the killing of his personal son.
On Friday, the Israel Protection Forces arrested him.
After practically three months of day by day Israeli assaults, troopers stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, killing dozens of individuals and detaining greater than 240 others, together with sufferers and medics. Captives had been pressured to strip and wait exterior in winter temperatures earlier than troopers took them to Israeli prisons and interrogation facilities, in accordance with the Gaza Health Ministry.
Amongst them was Abu Safiya, a pediatrician and hospital director and Gaza’s lead doctor for the U.S.-based medical assist group MedGlobal.
Kamal Adwan was the final functioning hospital in North Gaza, as Israel continues to wall the area off from the remainder of the Palestinian territory and from any form of exterior humanitarian help. Nonetheless, regardless of the ensuing lack of assets and the rising casualties, Abu Safiya managed to maintain the hospital in Beit Lahia at the very least partially working ― increasing its mattress capability from 120 to 200, and repeatedly posting updates on-line to point out the world what Kamal Adwan, its sufferers and its employees had been enduring by the hands of the Israeli navy.
“I think it’s important to have voices like him, because sometimes we’re buried by numbers ― you know, more than 1,000 medical professionals in Gaza were killed,” Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president of MedGlobal, instructed HuffPost on Monday. “Numbers mean something to maybe people who follow statistics, but for an average person they need to know who are these people.”
“He was the face of the medical community in Gaza, and the face of being a doctor, a humanitarian, [a] compassionate person who cares about having ventilators to his patients, and incubators to his neonatal intensive care unit, and medicine to the patients who have chronic diseases,” Sahloul continued. “And he showed that day after day after day.”
IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani stated Saturday that Abu Safiya “is a suspect” in what he described as “potential involvement in terrorist activity,” although he didn’t supply particulars. In the practically 15 months for the reason that October 2023 terrorist assault by Hamas, Israeli forces have tried to justify harming docs and sufferers and bombing medical services by claiming with out proof that Hamas militants function in hospitals ― an accusation that, even when true, would nonetheless not enable such assaults within the eyes of worldwide humanitarian legislation.
“The IDF entered the hospital over the past year four times, and they interrogated [Abu Safiya] four times, and they searched every place in the hospital. So if there’s anything that could have been suspicious, they would have found it a long time ago,” Sahloul stated. “So all of these talks about being [a] Hamas center and things like that is nonsense. No one believes these things anymore.”
Regardless of troopers telling Abu Safiya that he was free to depart, the physician reportedly refused to desert his medical staff on the hospital.
“He took all of us and wanted to get us out at night, but they yelled at him and arrested him,” nurse Waleed Al-Boudi instructed Center East Eye, including that Abu Safiya was taken captive at Al-Fakhoura College.
Israeli military footage of the arrest exhibits what seems to be the final time Abu Safiya was seen earlier than his detention, with troopers shaking his hand, addressing him as “Doctor” and having him enter their tank with them. Abu Safiya, nonetheless sporting his white coat, might be seen telling the troopers that there isn’t a one left inside Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Sahloul stated the IDF wouldn’t affirm Abu Safiya’s whereabouts with MedGlobal, however that household and eyewitnesses stated he was in Ofer jail with dozens of fellow medical employees earlier than getting transferred to the notoriously brutal Sde Teiman jail. HuffPost couldn’t independently confirm Abu Safiya’s location.
Witnesses, a few of them prisoners who’ve since been launched, stated the physician confirmed indicators of getting undergone torture and beatings ― testimony that dovetails with earlier in depth reporting on the situations and inhumane remedy that prisoners, together with well being care employees, face at alleged torture camps like Sde Teiman.
“Today, while he is being forced to stay in the Israeli Sde Teiman detention camp, known for its brutality against the prisoners imprisoned there,” the physician’s son, Idris Abu Safiya, stated in a video Monday. “We have received testimonies from released detainees confirming he was subjected to humiliation and abuse, including forcing him to undress and using him as a human shield.”
“We call upon all international institutions and human rights organizations… and every person of living conscience and all doctors in the world to take urgent and immediate action to pressure the occupation authorities to release my father, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, before he meets the fate of many doctors and medical workers,” Idris Abu Safiya stated.
Kristian Buus/In Photos through Getty Photos
Teams like the World Health Group, Amnesty Worldwide and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have demanded that Israeli forces launch Abu Safiya from captivity and cease concentrating on Gaza’s hospitals and well being care employees. Sahloul stated that he and Abu Safiya’s household have requested U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President-elect Donald Trump to stress the Israeli authorities to launch the hospital director and his colleagues.
The State Division is “aware of reports and still gathering information,” a spokesperson instructed HuffPost on Monday, including that claims of Hamas working in hospitals current Israel with “an unusual burden” however that Israel ought to do extra to curb civilian casualties. The company didn’t say whether or not it will stress Israel to launch Abu Safiya.
“As we have said before, we do not want to see firefights in hospitals where innocent people and patients receiving medical care are caught in the crossfire, and we have had active consultations with the Israeli Defense Forces on this,” the spokesperson stated. “We call on all parties of the conflict to respect the protected status of these facilities and to avoid harm to civilians receiving treatment and humanitarian workers providing that care.”
HuffPost revealed a report in October detailing how the Israeli navy is making certain the long-term decimation of the Palestinian individuals by concentrating on Gaza’s well being care system, stopping individuals from receiving remedy for the malnutrition and ailments that consequence from mass displacement and destroyed sanitation infrastructure. Amid the continuing destruction, Abu Safiya had turn into one of many final docs in northern Gaza and the voice of the territory’s medical neighborhood.
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“He told me one time that he will provide the same care to an injured Israeli soldier, similar to a Palestinian child who ended up in his hospital,” Sahloul stated. “He is the essence of being a physician and humanitarian, and he deserves to have the Nobel Peace Prize. Not to be detained and injured.”
