The director of Gaza’s main hospital said at a press conference on Monday that he was tortured while being held without charges for the last seven months at an Israeli detention center.
Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of the Al-Shifa hospital, once Gaza’s main medical center, made the claims after he and 54 other Palestinian detainees were released and arrived back to the Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces had raided the hospital in November and alleged that Abu Salmiya was involved in making it a Hamas command center. They later destroyed the hospital.
Abu Salmiya said detention guards broke his finger and beat him to the point that his head bled — and that he wasn’t the only one.
“Our detainees have been subjected to all kinds of torture behind bars,” Abu Salmiya said. “There was almost daily torture.”
There was “daily physical and psychological humiliation,” he added.
He also said that they were severely underfed, surviving on nothing more than a loaf of bread per day. He said that all of the detainees had lost at least 30 kilograms (66 pounds).
Israeli forces seized Abu Salmiya from a United Nations convoy on November 22. They took him to court three times while in detainment but brought no charges and allowed him no lawyer, Abu Salmiya said.
His detention in November followed an Israeli siege of Al-Shifa hospital, which Israeli officials said had become a Hamas control center. Though weapons were found at the hospital, an investigation by The Washington Post in December showed that the evidence fell short of revealing a command center, and that key claims the Israelis had made to justify the siege turned out to be incorrect.
Israeli forces attacked the hospital again in late March, killing hundreds and leaving the facility mostly destroyed. Several mass graves were discovered near the hospital site in the weeks that followed.
Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians since the war started, leading to “intolerable overcrowding” of its facilities, as Haaretz reported in February. Many detainees are held without charges in what is called “administrative detention.”
At least 40 Palestinians have died in Israeli detention during the war, according to Addameer, a Palestinian watchdog group. Salmiya said Monday that some had been killed in interrogation cells, Al Jazeera reported.
At least one other doctor was among those released on Monday: Bassam Miqdad, head of the orthopedic unit at Gaza European hospital in Khan Younis.
In April, Adnan Ahmad Albursh, a 50-year-old Palestinian surgeon, died in Israeli detention, according to Palestinian officials and rights groups. He had been the head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa hospital. Overall, hundreds of healthcare workers have been killed during the war.
Israeli officials and political figures from various parties denounced the release of the 55 detainees, which was reportedly done to make space in the overcrowded detention centers.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right minister in charge of Israel’s police and prison service, called the release of the detainees a case of “security negligence” and blamed another ministry. Benny Gantz, an opposition figure who recently resigned from the war cabinet, said whoever released the detainees should be fired and that government offices should be made available to “free up space and budget for prisoners,” according to Al Jazeera.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.