Elyas Abu Safia says his father can barely breathe or speak after more than 555 days in Israeli captivity.

Author: Elis Gjevori 

The son of a prominent Palestinian doctor abducted and detained by Israel without charge has issued an urgent appeal for his father’s release, warning that his health has deteriorated drastically after more than 555 days in prison, and a rights group has warned that his life is in danger.

Elyas Abu Safia, the son of Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, said in a video message on Sunday that his father, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, showed signs of severe abuse after Israeli authorities transferred him to solitary confinement in a high-security prison.

„The day before yesterday, lawyer Nasser Odeh managed to visit my father and told him painful details about this meeting,” said Elyas, who also works as a doctor.

„My father was unable to breathe. My father was unable to speak,” he said, adding, „His face was disfigured from the torture and pain and the blood he suffered in prison, especially after the last court hearing in Jerusalem.”

Israeli forces arrested Abu Safia while working on December 27, 2024, as they escalated their attacks on the Gaza healthcare system as part of their genocidal war against Palestinians. Two months earlier, an Israeli drone strike killed his other son, Ibrahim, at the entrance to the hospital where he worked.

Elyas accused Arab and Muslim leaders of abandoning his father.

„You have even taken away your voice, your solidarity and your support from us, which should have been there from the beginning of the detention,” he said.

„But unfortunately, your silence is treason and a crime, and complicity in the torture of my father and the hostages in Israeli prisons,” he added.

„"The most shocking testimony"”

Physicians for Human Rights Israel warned that Abu Safia's life was in imminent danger after she was transferred to the Rakefet section of Nitzan prison.

The group said lawyer Nasser Odeh visited Abu Safia on July 2 and documented severe injuries, signs of abuse, breathing difficulties and repeated loss of consciousness. They said he was brought in for the visit with his hands and feet handcuffed by guards and surrounded by masked officers.

Odeh also saw fresh bruises and injuries on Abu Safia's head, around her eyes, ears and neck. The wounds were so severe that the lawyer barely recognized her, the group said.

„The information we have received raises serious and immediate concerns for Abu Safia’s life. The lawyer’s testimony is one of the most shocking we have heard since the beginning of the war: a man detained without charge tells his lawyer that he believes he will be killed after arriving for a visit injured, struggling to breathe and on the verge of unconsciousness,” Naji Abbas, director of the Prisoners and Detainees Department at Physicians for Human Rights, told the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa.

Israeli authorities have not charged Abu Safia. He was classified as an „unlawful combatant,” a designation Israel uses for long-term detentions of Palestinians without trial.

Physicians for Human Rights has demanded the release of him and other imprisoned Palestinian doctors. In March, UN experts also called on Israel to immediately release Abu Safia and ensure he receives medical care.

He is one of 14 Palestinian doctors from Gaza currently being held without charge by Israel.

Release Dr. Hussam Abu Safia immediately!

The genocide has been going on for over 1,000 days, and Abu Safia has been detained for 500 days. We need urgent action to end both.

Author: Mads Gilbert is a Norwegian physician and writer.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safia’s life is in imminent danger, his lawyer, Nasser Odeh, said after visiting him on Thursday in the underground interrogation center that is part of Israel’s Nitzan prison.

If we do not act immediately, Gaza could lose another excellent doctor and Israel could get away with another brutal crime.

Abu Safia, a Palestinian pediatrician and hospital director, came to global attention on December 27, 2024. That day, a video emerged showing him wearing a medical gown walking through the bombed-out ruins of a former street in northern Gaza toward an armored vehicle where Israeli soldiers were waiting for him.

He did not surrender to an army; he surrendered the small but critical Kamal Adwan Hospital after an 85-day siege, forcing its staff and patients to leave at gunpoint. A hospital that should have been protected by international law, world leaders, and the United Nations was instead attacked and deprived of medicine, electricity, and supplies.

2024. On December 6, when Israeli troops stormed the hospital, at least 30 people were killed and 20 were wounded. When her teenage son, Ibrahim, was killed outside the hospital, Abu Safia led the funeral prayer herself before rushing back to her child patients.

The photo and video of Abu Safia’s final moments of freedom were shared around the world on social media, capturing the attention of millions and demonstrating the limits of social media activism. The global spotlight did not change his fate, Gaza’s fate, or the policies of the Israeli „rogue state.”.

Abu Safia is not a „terrorist” or a „fighter.” If anything, he is a defender of life who stands by his patients: Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation, who are the targets of bombings, sniper attacks, and the sadistic Israeli siege that causes widespread hunger, thirst, disease, and premature death among them.

Israel claims that Abu Safia is „linked to Hamas” and is holding him under the „Unlawful Combatants Law.” No evidence has been presented to support these charges, no indictments have been filed, and no independent observers have been able to examine the intelligence that allegedly justifies his detention.

On June 10, after more than 500 days of brutal imprisonment, Abu Safia finally appeared in public. He appeared via video link from the notorious Nafha prison for his trial at the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem. Handcuffed, with his legs shackled, he appeared emaciated and ill, but his demeanor remained calm and dignified. Less than a month later, his lawyer visited him in Nitzan prison. The lawyer barely recognized his client, so badly had he been beaten, and he lost consciousness several times during the meeting.

Abu Safia is one of hundreds of Palestinian health workers being held by Israel. Fourteen doctors, including him, continue to languish in Israeli detention camps and prisons. Two did not survive, and 1,700 health workers have been killed.

Why are Israeli authorities arresting, torturing, and killing Palestinian doctors and hospital staff in Gaza? For decades, Israeli occupation forces have been attacking Palestinian healthcare – in violation of international law – to facilitate ethnic cleansing and collective punishment as part of their settler-colonial project. The goal of Israeli „epistemicide” is to erase all traces of Palestinian knowledge, infrastructure, and civil society.

To cover up their crimes, the Israeli military claims that Gaza hospitals are military hideouts or „command centers” for the Palestinian armed resistance. To this day, they have been unable to provide independent, verifiable evidence of this. I have worked in various hospitals in Gaza for 25 years, mainly in al-Shifa in Gaza City, and I have never, ever seen any evidence that hospitals or ambulances are being used for such purposes.

The arrest, abuse and torture of Palestinian doctors and hospital staff in Gaza is aimed at extracting false confessions about this use of hospitals. Without success. My colleagues never gave in. They stood up for the truth.

But there is another Israeli motivation for the detention and mass murder of healthcare workers. Hospital staff are eyewitnesses to Israeli war crimes and are directly involved in documenting them. Since the beginning of the genocide, pediatricians like Abu Safia have sounded the alarm about Israel’s targeted attacks on Palestinian children, with the goal of extermination.

What they said all along was finally confirmed in a recent UN report, which concluded that there was clear evidence of „Israel’s deliberate and direct attacks on Palestinian children” and the destruction of „the essence of childhood.”.

More than 24,000 children in Gaza have lost their lives – an average of one Palestinian child every hour killed by Israeli occupying forces for 1,000 days.

As of September, at least 1,009 of the victims were infants or young children. Almost half of these infants (450) were born and died during the war. At least 42,011 children were injured.

One million Palestinian children continue to live under the sadistic Israeli siege, homeless, food insecure, without safe drinking water, regular schooling or adequate medical care. The killing and maiming of Gaza's children continues daily.

A leading Gaza pediatrician recently described to me the life of Gaza schoolchildren: „The most important tasks that schoolchildren do every morning are: first, searching for water; second, searching for food in food distribution centers; and third, collecting trash that can be used as lighters. … So every morning we find hundreds of children digging through the trash, looking for anything that can start a fire.”

Like the murdered and starving children of Gaza, Abu Safia is a prominent symbol of Israel's rogue nature. That is why Israeli authorities continue to torture her and keep her in solitary confinement, while Israeli courts reject her requests for her release.

My Palestinian colleagues in Gaza are not only demanding the release of Abu Safia, humanitarian aid to hospitals, and an end to the persecution of health workers. They are demanding an immediate end to the occupation and siege, and the restoration of the basic conditions that make health possible: human security, dignity, food, water, justice, and the protection of civilians. The root problem in Gaza, now as it was 1,000 days ago, is the US-backed Israeli colonial occupation, the sadistic siege, structural violence, and apartheid.

Neither an international „band-aid” with a few international medical teams under Israeli control, nor empty international rhetoric and passive condemnation will change the situation. From a preventive medical perspective, the only way forward is through strict, formal international sanctions and isolation of Israel through boycotts to stop this genocide, end the occupation, and save lives.

Time is running out. History will judge us. There are no excuses.

Do something, do more – or be complicit.

This is our responsibility; it is the responsibility of every Western politician, parliament and government. Everyone can do their part. Be active, protest and organize solidarity and support for the just struggle and resistance of the Palestinian people.

Seventeen years ago, during the 2009 Israel-Gaza war, I shouted from al-Shifa hospital: „We are wading through death, blood and amputated limbs. Many children. Pregnant women. I have never experienced anything so terrible. Now we hear tanks. Tell us, pass it on, shout. Anything. DO SOMETHING! DO MORE! We are all living in the history books now!”

The call to „Do something! Do more!” has never been more urgent.