Dr Hussam Abu Safiya remains detained, symbol of Gaza health‑worker repression
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a paediatrician and director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, became an iconic image in December 2024 when he walked alone across hospital rubble toward an Israeli Merkava tank. The photograph highlighted his commitment to treating children while the Israeli military closed in.
More than 540 days later, he is still held in an Israeli prison without charge under the “Unlawful Combatants Law,” which permits indefinite detention without the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Appearing before Israel’s Supreme Court by video link on 10 June 2026, he was gaunt, shackled, and bearing signs of torture. His son Ibrahim was killed during the siege of the hospital. Abu Safiya’s case is one of at least fourteen detained Gazan doctors and over 1,300 Palestinians held under the same law, many reporting similar beatings, starvation and isolation.
The Israeli Supreme Court rejected his appeal on the basis of undisclosed intelligence, and the state has offered no evidence of a Hamas rank. Physicians for Human Rights Israel argue that the detention aims to silence witnesses to the siege and its humanitarian toll. Abu Safiya’s image has also been referenced in scholarly critiques of Israeli necropolitics, underscoring his role as a living testament to the broader repression of health workers in Gaza.