Held by Israel on suspicion of belonging to the Palestinian Hamas movement, Dr Hossam Abu Safiya, the director of a stormed Gaza hospital, has become the face of a crumbling health system in the war-torn territory.
For weeks, as Israeli raids intensified around his facility in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, Dr. Abou Safiya had desperately pleaded with the international community to intervene "before it was too late."
His calls for help, relayed on social networks and in the media, were not enough.
As feared, the Israeli army launched a major operation on Friday morning against the Kamal Adwan hospital, which it said served as a command center for the Islamist Hamas fighters.
This last major hospital still operational in the north of the devastated and besieged territory, where the health situation is critical after more than a year of war, has been put out of service.
The soldiers arrested more than 240 individuals during their offensive. Among them: Dr. Abu Safiya, who they believe to be a Hamas militant, the movement responsible for an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which triggered the war in Gaza.
– “Brutalities” –
The 51-year-old doctor, a pediatrician by training, has not given any signs of life since. And the Israeli army, contacted by AFP, did not specify his whereabouts.
His family believes he is being held at the Sde Teiman military base in the Negev desert in southern Israel, near Gaza.
"This detention camp is known for the brutality that prisoners suffer there," her son Idris Abou Safiya said in a video message on Monday evening.
"We have received testimonies from released prisoners saying that he was subjected to humiliation and abuse, including being forced to undress and used as a human shield," he added.
The army did not respond to this either.
The shutdown of the Kamal Adwan hospital and the arrest of its director and several other medical staff deal a new blow to already depleted health services in the Gaza Strip.
– “Hero in a white coat” –
"Nothing justifies these arrests except the ambition to destroy the health system," Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for the Gazan Civil Defense, told AFP, for whom "the situation is catastrophic and tragic."
Relatives of Dr. Abou Safiya have called on the international community to put pressure on Israel to release him as soon as possible.
Their message was heard.
The World Health Organization, through its Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has called for the "immediate release" of the director.
Amnesty International did the same, as did many health professionals around the world on social media behind the hashtag #FreeDrHussamAbuSafiya.
Dr. Abu Safiya is being hailed as a "hero in a white coat" for continuing to do his job as the Israeli military stepped up its ground and air offensive in northern Gaza in early October in what it said was a bid to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping.
According to the American NGO that employs him, MedGlobal, the doctor lost one of his sons, Ibrahim, aged around fifteen, in an Israeli attack at the end of October.
He himself was injured in the leg by shrapnel in November, but said in a video filmed from his hospital bed that it would not stop him from carrying out his mission, "whatever the cost".
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