Throughout Israel’s struggle on Gaza, Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, was warned by Israeli troopers for months in 2024 to take his household and depart his duties.
However Abu Safia refused to depart his sufferers behind, as his colleagues and household mentioned in a documentary by Al Jazeera’s Fault Traces.
Advisable Tales
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Then in December as Israeli forces surrounded the hospital, an Israeli officer referred to as Abu Safia and promised to relocate him and his workers to a different hospital.
However the promise was a lie. As a substitute, the paediatrician and neonatologist was kidnapped by Israeli forces.
Ten months later, Abu Safia remains to be in detention as Israel has refused to incorporate him in prisoner exchanges. His lawyer mentioned he’s been subjected to torture and inhumane remedy, together with lengthy durations in solitary confinement.
Refusing to flee
Earlier than his arrest, Abu Safia watched Israel’s struggle on Gaza unfold with rising brutality.
In the course of the earlier days of the struggle, Abu Safia would do his rounds each day and make movies, calling for worldwide help and consciousness over Israel’s struggle on his homeland.
Hundreds of individuals had been being killed, and Israel’s siege of Gaza meant that much-needed tools and drugs weren’t getting in.
It grew to become obvious that Israel’s struggle was not simply in opposition to Hamas however in opposition to the Gaza Strip as an entire, together with its medical infrastructure.
Regardless of elevated assaults on healthcare staff, Abu Safia refused to desert his sufferers, even after he went from physician to affected person when he was wounded in a drone strike on the hospital on November 25.
His household started to ask him if it may be higher to depart Gaza altogether.
“He mentioned: ‘If you wish to journey, take the youngsters, however I’m going to remain right here to work,’” his spouse, Albina, mentioned.
However she refused. “I mentioned: ‘We have to keep collectively,’” she mentioned of the “severe and devoted” medical pupil she married about 30 years in the past.
The 2 met in Kazakhstan within the Nineteen Nineties when he was finding out drugs there.
After the beginning of their first son, Elias, Albina and Abu Safia moved again to Gaza in 1998 and lived within the Jabalia refugee camp. Over the approaching years, Albina gave beginning to a few extra sons and two daughters.
Elias was married in 2020 and had two kids, and some months earlier than the struggle started, Albina and Abu Safia moved to a brand new home in Beit Lahiya.
However the struggle would upend their life and their household.
In the course of the assault that wounded Abu Safia, his daughter was additionally wounded by a shard of glass that went into her neck.
His worst day, nonetheless, was when he misplaced his 20-year-old son Ibrahim.
“His entire life was nonetheless forward of him,” Albina mentioned.
“He needed to grow to be a health care provider like his father. … He was registered to journey to Kazakhstan [where he was a citizen]. However that by no means occurred.”
Ibrahim was out on the market when Kamal Adwan Hospital got here below assault from quadcopters, Albina mentioned. He advised his mom he was at a home by the hospital and would come again when issues calmed down.
An Israeli army operation on the hospital ensued and lasted about 30 hours. When it completed, Albina was advised to return to the hospital’s reception space. It was the morning of October 25, 2024, and there have been many deaths from the Israeli assaults. Amongst them, nonetheless, was one she hadn’t anticipated.
“I noticed my husband crying,” she mentioned. “I understood then that my son was killed. It was the toughest day of our lives, … for me, for my husband and for our youngsters.”
Abduction
Abu Safia nonetheless refused to surrender his work, whilst Israeli assaults on Kamal Adwan intensified and the military surrounded the hospital, however when troopers arrived at its doorways, Abu Safia realised it was time to depart.
An Israeli military officer named Wael allegedly gave Abu Safia assurances that the hospital’s workers can be relocated to the Indonesian Hospital, additionally in northern Gaza, to proceed their essential work.
Abu Safia advised his household, together with his remaining 5 kids, who had been residing within the hospital with him at that time, to pack and that the Israeli military had mentioned it will relocate them.
“The final time I noticed him was once I acquired onto the bus with all my daughters and sons,” Albina mentioned. “It was December 27 round sundown. We haven’t seen him since.”
Albina and her kids came upon the subsequent day from different medical doctors that the Israelis got here, interrogated and mistreated the hospital workers and took Abu Safia.
“He mentioned: ‘I received’t get within the automobile till all of the medical doctors depart and I’m the final one,’” Albina recalled the hospital workers telling her.
Abu Safia was taken by the Israeli troopers, who continued attacking the hospital till they withdrew a couple of weeks later in January. Once they lastly pulled out, the hospital was inoperable.
“We went to the hospital, and it was burned and destroyed,” Albina mentioned.
“They bombed and burned the emergency room, and so they bombed the intensive care unit,” she mentioned.
Imprisoned
Since October 7, Israel has performed arrests of hundreds of Palestinians in each Gaza and the occupied West Financial institution. Many have been held with out cost or trial and subjected to torture and abuse, in line with launched prisoners and human rights teams.
After he was arrested, Abu Safia was taken to the Sde Teiman army detention camp in Israel’s Negev desert, the place claims of torture are prevalent, earlier than being transferred to Ofer Jail.
In jail, Abu Safia’s destiny would solely worsen.
He was disadvantaged of any guests other than his lawyer, Ghaid Kassem. Abu Safia was unable to obtain his household, so when his mom died, it was Kassem who knowledgeable him of her dying.
Kassem spoke to Fault Traces about her years of expertise representing Palestinian prisoners in Israel, practically all of whom have suffered torture or different inhumane remedy.
“I’ve coated virtually all prisons in Israel,” Kassem advised Al Jazeera.
“However after all, the expertise after October 7 [2023] is the one which shocked us essentially the most, and it’s completely completely different from earlier than October 7, particularly since we began to signify detainees from Gaza.”
Prisons in Israel have at all times been a darkish place for Palestinians. However Kassem mentioned the variety of violations has skyrocketed for the reason that Hamas-led assaults on Israel on October 7 two years in the past and the beginning of the struggle on Gaza. Situations have worsened to the purpose that many prisoners are contracting infections and pores and skin ailments, she mentioned.
“This big variety of violations, we had by no means encountered this many earlier than,” she mentioned.
Abu Safia himself endured torture and a number of beatings at Sde Teiman, Kassem mentioned. He has additionally misplaced an alarming quantity of weight.
“He has hypertension. He has tachycardia,” Kassem mentioned. Tachycardia is an irregular heartbeat.
“He’s affected by shrapnel [that is] nonetheless in his leg and his proper thigh.”
Israel’s marketing campaign in Gaza has killed greater than 67,000 Palestinians and devastated the nation’s medical infrastructure. Since a ceasefire got here into impact on October 10, Israel has continued to launch attacks in Gaza and throughout the area.
As a part of the ceasefire, Israel agreed to release about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in change for the discharge of the remaining residing Israeli captives held in Gaza and the our bodies of the deceased. Hundreds of Palestinians, nonetheless, stay in custody, and amongst them is Abu Safia.
His household nonetheless hopes he might be launched quickly. They preserve he’s accomplished nothing incorrect and Abu Safia has devoted his life to serving sufferers in Gaza. Additionally they hope that if launched, his psychological and bodily capability doesn’t mirror the injury Israel has induced to healthcare within the Gaza Strip.
“They destroyed healthcare in Gaza,” Albina mentioned.
“They destroyed it. They killed all of the medical doctors and killed many individuals. What they meant was to kill profitable folks and kill medical doctors so as to not enable them to [treat] folks.”
