The detention of Gaza’s most visible physician has alarmed UN experts, human rights groups, and the global medical community — with no charges made public.
A doctor in plain sight
The image was hard to ignore. In December 2024, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya walked toward Israeli tanks in his white medical coat, arms open. He was not carrying a weapon. He was trying to keep his hospital running.
Weeks later, he was gone.
Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza and lead physician for MedGlobal, a Chicago-based nonprofit, was taken into Israeli military custody. His family and legal team say they were given no formal explanation. The Israeli military initially denied holding him at all, then later alleged, without presenting any evidence, that he held a rank within Hamas.
His colleagues and human rights advocates reject that characterization.
What the Israeli military has and hasn’t said about Abu Safiya
The Israeli government has not publicly disclosed the legal basis for Abu Safiya’s continued detention. Under Israel’s administrative detention policy, individuals can be held indefinitely based on classified evidence that is never shared with the detainee or their lawyers. Human rights organizations have long criticized the practice as a violation of due process.
His legal team has reported that he was subjected to torture while in custody. That claim has not been independently verified, but it fits a documented pattern. Multiple rights organizations have reported the mistreatment of Palestinian detainees since the conflict escalated following Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
The UN’s response
A group of United Nations human rights experts described Abu Safiya’s detention as flagrantly arbitrary. They contacted the Israeli government requesting information about his condition and the grounds for his imprisonment. No substantive response has been made public.
The experts noted the absence of due process and the lack of transparency around his case. For a detainee whose only publicly documented act was walking toward military vehicles in a doctor’s coat to protect his patients, that opacity has drawn sharp criticism.
Dr. John Kahler, co-founder of MedGlobal, described Abu Safiya as a symbol of integrity in an impossible situation, someone whose instinct under fire was to stay and treat the wounded.
Gaza’s healthcare system in free fall
Abu Safiya’s detention does not exist in isolation. It reflects a broader collapse. Since October 2023, approximately 1,200 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza, according to reports from humanitarian organizations monitoring the conflict. Dozens more are believed to be in Israeli custody.
The healthcare infrastructure itself has been shredded. Hospitals have been raided, damaged, or rendered inoperable. Medical staff who remained at their posts have been detained, disappeared, or killed.
Gaza’s health system was already fragile before the war. What it looks like now, for the roughly 2 million people still there, is a humanitarian emergency with few functioning institutions left.
More than 9,400 detained
Abu Safiya is one of more than 9,400 people currently reported to be in Israeli detention, according to rights groups tracking the situation. More than 3,400 of those are held under administrative detention, meaning no charges, no trial, no disclosed evidence.
For the families of those detainees, and for the patients Abu Safiya left behind, the absence of answers is its own form of punishment.
Human rights advocates are not asking for special treatment for Abu Safiya. They are asking for the same thing that applies to anyone held in a functioning legal system: transparency, due process, and an accounting for what is being done in the name of security.
That accounting has not come.
