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Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was kidnapped by Israeli forces from the Kamal Adwan hospital in Gaza in 2024, has been transferred to solitary confinement in Israel after more than 500 days of detention without trial.
Abu Safiya was the director of Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, and kept the hospital running for more than 80 days under Israeli siege and bombardment in 2024. He refused to evacuate the hospital or abandon his patients there, even as Israel bombed the hospital.
In December 2024, Israeli forces stormed the hospital, which was the last major health facility functioning in northern Gaza at the time. During the raid, Israeli soldiers burnt and damaged parts of the hospital, and detained Abu Safiya along with the remaining medical staff and patients. According to reports, soldiers forced those who remained at the hospital to remove their clothes.
Until his detention, Abu Safiya was “one of the most prominent voices of Gaza’s decimated healthcare sector,” according to Amnesty International.
On Friday, Physicians for Human Rights Israel said that Abu Safiya was transferred to solitary confinement without explanation while in a maximum-security prison in Israel. Though he has been imprisoned for almost a year and a half, Israel has never charged him.
In a video statement released Friday, Abu Safiya’s son Elias, who is also a doctor, said that his father was moved in retaliation for making an appeal about his case.
“After the lawyer and his defense team submitted an appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court, the response to this legal process was further punishment and retaliation. My father was transferred from Negev Prison to solitary confinement in Nafha Prison,” Elias said.
“How can a person be punished simply for seeking to know why he is being detained? How can turning to the courts become a reason for more punishment, isolation, and abuse?”
Elias has also spoken about the conditions his father has faced while in detention, saying that for months, his father was not allowed to change his clothes and was left with untreated wounds.
Abu Safiya’s son Ibrahim was killed by a drone strike at the entrance to the Kamal Adwan hospital in October 2024.
Abu Safiya was initially held at Sde Teiman, the Israeli military base notorious for its torture and sexual abuse of Palestinians being detained. Lawyers have reported that throughout his imprisonment, he has been beaten regularly, and that he has been forcibly stripped, denied medical care, and deprived of food and water.
Last week, Abu Safiya reportedly asked his lawyer to tell his son Elias to get in touch with the prominent Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif, to “remind the world” what Gaza is going through. He did not know that Anas al-Sharif, who became a well-respected journalist in Gaza during the course of the genocide, had been killed by Israel in August 2025, when Israeli soldiers targeted him and four other journalists outside of Gaza’s Shifa Hospital.
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