Gaza hospital director held at notorious Israeli military detention center, recently released detainees say
By Abeer Salman, Tareq Al Hilou, Hira Humayun and Irene Nasser, CNN
(CNN) — A prominent Palestinian hospital director who was arrested by Israel in a raid that closed the last major functioning health facility in northern Gaza is being held at a controversial military base that doubles as a detention facility, recently released former detainees have told CNN.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya has not been seen publicly since Israeli forces raided Kamal Adwan hospital on Friday. Staff members accused Israeli forces of starting a fire in the hospital and said they were all rounded up outside and forced to remove their clothes, a process that took hours, before being forced to leave.
Local journalist Mohammad Al-Sharif said he was among those who were detained from the hospital before his release 11 hours later.
“We endured extremely difficult moments in inhumane conditions,” he told CNN. “The occupation army made no distinction between medical staff, patients, civilians, or journalists.”
The Israeli military said on Saturday it had detained Dr. Abu Safiya because he was “suspected of being a Hamas terrorist operative,” and claimed that the hospital was being used by Hamas as a “command and control center.” The military did not provide any evidence to support the claims.
His family had issued appeals for his whereabouts following his arrest. Former detainees of Sde Teiman, a shadowy military base in Israel’s Negev desert near the Gaza border, say the doctor and other medics from the Kamal Adwan raid are being held there.
Two Palestinian prisoners released this weekend from the facility said they saw Abu Safiya at the prison, and another former detainee said he heard Abu Safiya’s name being read out. CNN cannot independently verify their accounts. The Israeli military has not confirmed to CNN whether Abu Safiya is being held at the facility.
Ahmad Al Sayyed Saleem, 18, said a doctor from the Abu Safiya family was brought into the prison on Saturday. Saleem, who is from northern Gaza and said he knew Dr. Abu Safiya, was detained 42 days ago at an Israeli checkpoint when he evacuated northern Gaza and was on his way to Gaza City.
Yahya Zaqout, who was arrested 42 days ago, said he did not see Dr. Abu Safiya but was in the cell next to his.
“I heard them calling his name between the names they call every morning and night, and we had men that were brought to our cell and told us they were detained along with Dr. Hussam,” he said.
Alaa Abu Banat, a former inmate who was detained 43 days ago on his way home, said he knows Dr. Abu Safiya and a medical team from Kamal Adwan hospital was brought into Sde Teiman.
“They are all still in detention. They treated them really badly especially the doctors,” he said.
Abu Banat said one man who shared his cell told him he is a doctor and said he was beaten “until his eye was bleeding.” The cellmate added had spoken to Dr. Abu Safiya.
Dr. Abu Safiya’s family told CNN: “Sde Teiman is known for brutality and torture, we can’t imagine what our father is going through in that place and if he is well or not, warm or cold… hungry or in pain.”
“It is widely known the immense efforts he has made since the beginning of the war to support the only healthcare system for the residents of north Gaza,” the statement read.
Long siege
Dr. Abu Safiya has been one of the last doctors in northern Gaza over recent months and has documented the horror inside his hospital in the wake of a renewed Israeli offensive that began in early October in what the Israeli military said was targeting a resurgent Hamas presence there.
The two-month onslaught has razed streets to carpets of debris, killed entire families, and severely depleted food, water and medical stocks.
Since then, the Israeli military has fired on Kamal Adwan Hospital on a daily basis, and raided the facility at least six times, Dr. Abu Safiya told CNN earlier this month. Four doctors were killed at the hospital after Israeli forces stormed the compound, killing and injuring dozens of people in surrounding areas, eyewitnesses told CNN in early December.
During an Israeli military operation in October, dozens of medical personnel were detained; Dr. Abu Safiya was interrogated for hours, he told CNN at the time. Shortly after, his 21-year-old son was killed in an Israeli strike at the hospital’s gates. Dr. Abu Safiya buried his son Ibrahim in the facility’s makeshift graveyard.
MedGlobal, the US-based nonprofit Dr. Abu Safiya was lead physician in Gaza for, expressed concern for the doctor and condemned the latest Friday raid on the hospital, which it described as a “lifeline” for northern Gaza.
Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president and co-founder of MedGlobal and a close colleague of Dr. Abu Safiya, said on Sunday: “Dr. Abu Safiya has dedicated his life to protecting the health and lives of children in Gaza, providing care under conditions no medical professional should have to endure. His arrest is not only unjust – it is a violation of international humanitarian law, which upholds the protection of medical personnel in conflict zones. We urgently call for the immediate and unconditional release of Dr. Abu Safiya.”
The call for Abu Safiya’s release has been echoed by numerous organizations, including the WHO, Amnesty International and the Council on America-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
On Monday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus criticized in a statement on X the “forced patient and staff evacuation and the detention of (Kamal Adwan Hospital) director Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya,” and called for his release.
The shadowy Sde Teiman prison in Israel’s Negev desert is notorious for conditions of extreme abuse which CNN and others have documented.
In June, Israel transferred hundreds of Palestinian detainees out of the detention center, a state attorney told Israel’s Supreme Court during a first-ever hearing about the facility. The hearing came in response to a petition by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and other human rights groups, which drew heavily on CNN reporting about the makeshift prison to make a case for it to be shut down.
Kamal Adwan hospital has now ceased to operate.
“All patients and medical staff have evacuated from the area,” of Kamal Adwan hospital, the Israeli military has said. Patients were forced to move to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, the staff said, a facility the WHO has described as “destroyed and nonfunctional.”
Some staff members arrived in other parts of Gaza. Among them is Dr. Hani Badran, a cardiologist who lost 17 members of his family in an Israeli strike in November, including a newborn niece who he had delivered just weeks earlier.
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