The UN’s top expert on the occupied Palestinian territories has called for medical professionals worldwide to cut ties with Israel after it destroyed northern Gaza’s last operational hospital and abducted its director, sparking an outcry.
UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese called on the medical community to act on Monday, as reports emerged that Israeli forces are holding the head of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Hussam Abu Safiya, at a torture camp for Palestinian detainees that’s notorious for its brutality.
“I urge medical professionals worldwide to pursue the severance of all ties with Israel as a concrete way to forcefully denounce Israel’s full destruction of the Palestinian healthcare system in Gaza, a critical tool of its ongoing genocide,” Albanese said.
Israeli forces are reportedly holding Safiya at Israel’s Sde Teiman, where Palestinians, including children, have reported enduring constant torture, sexual assault and severe deprivation by Israeli guards. One witness, recently released from the facility, has told reporters that Israeli guards beat Safiya until his eye was bleeding. His current condition, like that of the thousands of Palestinians held by Israel without charges, is unknown.
Israeli authorities have claimed that Safiya and Kamal Adwan Hospital have ties with Hamas — a claim for which they have provided no evidence, and which, even if it were true, experts have said could not possibly justify their nearly three month-long assault of the hospital that has rendered it inoperable.
Advocates for Palestinian rights have long condemned Israel for its system of medical apartheid, while UN officials have found that Israel is carrying out a systematic campaign to destroy Gaza’s medical system. Israel’s destruction of Kamal Adwan means that northern Gaza is left without an operational hospital.
Albanese has called on international leaders to demand Safiya’s release. “Palestinians must be protected, especially those who have become icons of humanity in the face of an implacable genocide,” the UN expert said.
Safiya’s family has issued urgent pleas for the doctor’s release, begging international powers to stand up to Israel’s aggression.
A multitude of figures and groups have called for the release of Safiya — one of many doctors and health care workers targeted by Israeli forces throughout Israel’s genocide.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the WHO has not been informed of Safiya’s condition and called for Israel to release him.
“Hospitals in Gaza have once again become battlegrounds and the health system is under severe threat. Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is out of service — following the raid, forced patient and staff evacuation and the detention of its director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya two days ago,” Tedros said. “His whereabouts are unknown. We call for his immediate release.”
Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa office called for Safiya to be released “immediately and unconditionally.”
“For months Dr. Abu Safiya has been the voice of Gaza’s decimated health sector, appealing for the protection of his hospital and working under inhumane conditions, including following the killing of his son,” the group said. “Israel must immediately release all Palestinians arbitrarily detained, including health workers. Hospitals and health workers are not targets.”
Israel’s assault of Kamal Adwan has been extremely brutal, with weeks of attacks from Israel including weapons like booby trapped robots and barrels, drones and bombs. According to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, the Israeli military also carried out field executions and sexual assault in its attack on Friday. Some survivors described being used as human shields by Israeli forces, after being forcibly stripped.
The group urged the UN to immediately launch an investigation into Israel’s destruction of the hospital.
“During the assault, Israeli forces destroyed and burned most of Kamal Adwan Hospital’s sections after targeting it with shells. Preliminary information also indicates that several hospital staff members were killed while trying to extinguish fires in one of the hospital’s sections, which was completely rendered out of service,” the group found.
“Euro-Med Monitor reaffirms that the failure of states to fulfill their legal obligations to halt the genocide in Gaza over the past 14 months, coupled with their refusal to take decisive steps to compel Israel to stop its crimes, renders them internationally liable for these atrocities, with some states effectively becoming accomplices,” Euro-Med Monitor went on.
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