Called to surgery during his son’s funeral, he took his tears with him to the operating room
This article is adapted from The Disappearance of Dr. Abu Safiya, produced by Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines.
Living and working day and night at the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia, Gaza, was hellish. Shrapnel flew into
patient rooms. Nearby bombs interrupted surgeries. “There was no way to sleep at night. We were stressed 24-7,” Abdel Moneim Al-Shrafi, a nurse in his early twenties, recalled. “Streams of patients came in, but there were never enough staff or supplies.”
“Some patients actually died in front of us,” said Rawiya Tanboura, 32, a nurse who had worked with him since 2019, “they would have survived if they’d had surgery”.
On October 25, 2024 Israeli forces raided the hospital again. Female staff and family members were marched out and searched. Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya, along with about 44 other staff members were taken to an outpatient clinic, beaten,
and interrogated.
The following day, when Dr. Abu Safiya returned from being interrogated, he found his son had been killed. The family buried him in the soil just outside the hospital. But, his family said, the loss only strengthened Dr. Abu Safiya’s resolve.
He was called to surgery during his son’s funeral. “He couldn’t even take the time to grieve. He took his tears with him to the operating room.” In early October 2024 an Israel secret service officer called Dr. Abu Safiya, instructing him to leave the hospital. He refused.
On December 27, just before dawn, Israeli tanks and bulldozers encircled the hospital. Snipers took their positions. Quadcopters hovered above. “A big tank entered and stood by reception. And it started firing. It was firing forward, firing and turning.
“And then they pointed the muzzle through the reception door and it was [pointing at] patients,” Tanboura recalled. That night Al-Shrafi and Dr. Abu Safiya and the other men were stripped to their underwear, shackled, blindfolded and marched into the bitter cold. “They humiliated us, they hit us … They were treating us like we were terrorists,” Al-Shrafi recalled.
When his lawyer, finally saw him he was shackled, forced to kneel, and flanked by guards. She said he had several broken ribs
Dr. Safiya spent 25 days in solitary detention in the notorious Sde Teiman facility. He was not allowed a lawyer for 47 days. When his lawyer, Gheed Kassem, finally saw him he was shackled, forced to kneel, and flanked by guards. Kassem said he had several broken ribs, indicating he had been beaten. Some 150 healthcare workers from Gaza are in detention according to Healthcare Workers Watch.
Four have died in Israeli custody, including Dr. Iyad al-Rantisi, the former head of obstetrics and gynaecology at Kamal Adwan. Dr. Abu Safiya was held in Ofer prison [an Israeli military incarceration facility in the occupied West Bank] where prisoners are deprived of food and medical care.
As we went to press, he had not been freed following the ceasefire. Amnesty International and others were demanding his immediate release.
