Because the Israeli navy continues to dam entry to a high-profile Palestinian physician they kidnapped final month, medical staff and assist teams say that Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s ongoing detention and the dearth of transparency round it underscores Israel’s bigger marketing campaign of systematically destroying Gaza’s well being care system.
Israeli forces kidnapped Abu Safiya on Dec. 27 throughout an assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital. In line with the World Health Group, it was one in all dozens of assaults in a monthslong bombardment that has subjected lots of of sufferers and well being care staff to compelled evacuations, detentions and generally demise inside what was successfully the final functioning hospital in walled-off North Gaza.
Almost two weeks after the kidnapping, the Israeli navy has but to launch info on Abu Safiya’s whereabouts and standing — and can solely say that he’s in custody and is thought of a terror “suspect” with out offering proof to assist the declare. Authorities say the physician is banned from assembly with a lawyer till a minimum of Friday and refused to answer a authorized submitting by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel difficult that ban.
Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu by way of Getty Photographs
“We don’t know in which facility, we don’t know if he’s safe or not. He is not allowed to meet a doctor yet,” Naji Abbas, director of PHRI’s prisoners and detainees division, stated on Wednesday. PHRI has been preventing on behalf of Palestinians the group says are dealing with human rights violations in Israeli custody, and took on Abu Safiya’s authorized case.
“We don’t know what he’s being charged [with]. We assume that they don’t have anything against him,” Abbas continued. “Because from the 26 testimonies that we collected from [detained] health care workers, most of them were told directly that they are not accused or charged with anything, but they will stay in detention. That’s illegal. That’s illegal detention, it’s an illegal arrest.”
Not too long ago launched prisoners have informed the pediatrician’s family members and caseworkers that he’s being held at alleged torture camp Sde Teiman, the so-called “Israeli Guantanamo” the place detained Palestinians — together with well being care staff — face inhumane therapy and residing situations. Israeli authorities wouldn’t verify that Abu Safiya is being held at Sde Teiman, although launched prisoners described the physician exhibiting indicators of torture.
On Tuesday, Abu Safiya’s household introduced that the physician’s mom had died of a coronary heart assault simply months after an Israeli strike had killed his 19-year-old son, Ibrahim. Safiya’s mom had no prior cardiac points or medical situations, in keeping with Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president of medical assist group MedGlobal. Abu Safiya serves because the group’s lead doctor in Gaza.
“I spoke with her grandson … and he told me she was crying last night and she felt that her son is in distress – and she went to sleep, and she did not wake up,” Sahloul stated on Wednesday, including that she “died out of shock and sadness for what happened to her son.” Abu Safiya doesn’t but find out about his mom, he stated.
The physician’s detention has made worldwide headlines as a consequence of his frequent audio and video messages on-line documenting Israel’s bombing marketing campaign at Kamal Adwan Hospital. However his imprisonment is hardly an anomaly within the territory, the place Israel previously 12 months has killed greater than 1,000 medical professionals and detained about 230 — greater than 70 of whom have already died in jail, in keeping with PHRI and the Ministry of Health.
Regardless of it being a world human rights violation to focus on well being care staff, Israel legally doesn’t acknowledge detained Palestinians as prisoners of warfare — solely “unlawful combatants,” says PHRI. Abbas cited a case the place Israeli authorities detained a lady in her 80s with Alzheimer’s for 2 months and prevented her entry to a lawyer as a result of she was allegedly an “unlawful combatant.”
The focusing on of medical staff mixed with Israel’s bombing of hospitals and blocking of humanitarian assist has led to the systematic destruction of Gaza’s well being care system – main injured and sick Palestinians to go with out vital therapy and change into contaminated, creating “untold morbidities and suffering and death that are not counted as victims of war,” Sahloul stated.
“Put yourself in the shoes of a patient in the United States who gets injured, say, in a car accident,” stated Dr. Syed Sayeed, who returned final week from a medical mission in Gaza. “An ambulance picks them up, they travel on a road, they get to the hospital, they’re triaged by the appropriate physicians, they’re operated on in an appropriate situation, they have adequate nutrition and anti-sepsis measures so they heal, and then they have a rehabilitation phase where they reintegrate into society. Maybe they get their employment back.”
“Every one of these steps is completely and utterly destroyed throughout Gaza,” he continued. “So health care involves not just the building and the physicians, but it’s a complete and utter destruction of the determinants of health.”
Celal Gunes/Anadolu by way of Getty Photographs
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Abu Safiya’s family members and caseworkers have requested the worldwide neighborhood and medical professionals around the globe to not solely demand the physician’s launch however to additionally converse out in opposition to Israel’s marketing campaign to destroy Gaza’s well being care system. Medical staff throughout the globe have been staging protests since his arrest, and docs within the West who volunteered in Gaza plan to talk on Friday in regards to the plight of Palestinian well being care staff like Abu Safiya.
Israel’s medical neighborhood, nonetheless, has been largely silent on Gaza’s well being care disaster. Whereas some Israeli physicians have beforehand described to HuffPost a kind of fear-based code of silence among the many medical neighborhood, others both don’t know or just don’t care. Employees in some circumstances will outright encourage the violence, Abbas stated – recounting situations of docs demanding the Israeli military raid Al-Shifa Hospital, of a health care provider bragging about withholding painkillers from a wounded Palestinian affected person, and of Health Minister Uriel Busso blocking Israel’s civilian hospitals from treating sufferers from Gaza.
Abu Safiya “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 informed HuffPost simply days after the pediatrician’s arrest. “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.”
