Last December, Israeli forces stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital—the last major functioning health facility in northern Gaza at the time—and arrested hospital director Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a well-known Palestinian doctor from Gaza, along with other medical staff and patients, totaling 240 people.
The attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital and arrest of Abu Safiya was the final blow to Beit Lahiya, a city in northern Gaza that was demolished by a three-month military campaign. But the ambush was also part of a much larger Israeli attack on health care in Gaza. Despite the fact that targeting hospitals is considered a war crime under the 1949 Geneva Convention, Israel has consistently done just that.
One year earlier, Israeli forces detained Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, a prominent Palestinian orthopedic surgeon who was the head of orthopedics at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. On April 19, 2024, al-Bursh died in Israeli military detention as a result of torture throughout his four months of captivity. His story sparked outrage across the world and strengthened the resolve of activists and human rights defenders to protect medical staff, whose status has special safeguards under international humanitarian law.
Abu Safiya is currently being held under Israel’s 2002 Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law, which allows Israel to indefinitely detain without trial individuals it deems to have participated in “hostile acts” who are not entitled to prisoner-of-war status. The law has been used to detain individuals, including medical professionals, on the grounds that their institutions or affiliations are considered part of a “hostile force.” Israel is currently detaining more than 2,300 people under this law, according to HaMoked, an Israel-based human rights and legal advocacy organization. Abu Safiya has now been held by Israel without charge for seven months. In that time, he, like many detained Palestinians, has endured severe abuse, medical neglect, and prolonged periods of solitary confinement at the hands of Israeli officers and guards.
Direct knowledge of the Israeli prison system is key to understanding both Abu Safiya’s experience and the everyday conditions of Palestinian prisoners. Gheed Kassem, a lawyer from Nazareth who represents Abu Safiya, has spent years fighting for the rights and human rights protections of Palestinian prisoners. Kassem documents serious violations, closely monitors detention conditions, and advocates for those held captive by, for example, demanding they have access to clean clothes and medical care. In the past twenty months, she has visited nearly 150 detainees in Israeli prisons across the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Kassem took up Abu Safiya’s case in March.
“I insisted on taking his case,” Kassem tells The Progressive, “because I was determined to prevent another tragedy like what happened to Dr. Adnan al-Bursh and other physicians who died in detention.”
The Progressive spoke with Kassem about Abu Safiya’s case and the fight for the rights of Palestinians detained by Israel. This interview was translated from Arabic, and has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: When did you last visit Abu Safiya, and what were his physical and mental health like?
Gheed Kassem: I last met [with] him on July 9, 2025, at Ofer Prison [in the West Bank], for about thirty minutes. I immediately saw a marked weight loss. Dr. Abu Safiya has lost over forty kilograms [approximately eight-eight pounds] since Israeli forces arrested him last December at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. He [has] suffered physical violence, beatings, and abuse. On June 24, specifically, he endured severe blows for about half an hour, hitting his chest, face, head, and neck.
Q: How often are you allowed to meet with him? What are the limitations on the length and manner of your visits?
Kassem: Every single visit needs a formal request submitted at least four months in advance to the prison management or directly to Ofer Prison. Authorities constantly try to cancel these meetings or stop lawyers from holding them, making our work incredibly difficult. Their strategy is clear: keep detainees completely cut off from the outside world. Our presence, even short, breaks this isolation, and that’s exactly why they try to prevent it by any means.
Guards enforce very strict conditions, especially constant listening and audio-video recording. This creates a deeply intimidating environment, violating both the detainee’s and the lawyer’s rights. Often, visits last only a few minutes, but the lawyer can wait for hours, enduring rude and degrading treatment [from Israeli officers]. The restrictions are countless, almost impossible to list.
Q: Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails are repeatedly denied or refused proper medical care. Reports from numerous humanitarian organizations reveal that the Israeli Prison Service, in addition to carrying out torture, enforces this medical neglect toward Palestinian detainees, leading to the spread of epidemics and skin diseases such as scabies amid overcrowded and unhygienic conditions. Has Abu Safiya experienced this?
Kassem: Israeli authorities have denied him life-saving medications, basic treatment, and even access to a cardiologist despite his serious arrhythmia. He keeps requesting medical help both directly and through me but receives only delayed responses and clearly insufficient care.
Q: Do detainees face challenges obtaining legal aid? How much time passed before Abu Safiya could finally have a lawyer?
Kassem: Denying access to legal defense is a planned violation of basic rights. In Dr. Abu Safiya’s case, Israeli authorities delayed any contact with a lawyer for fifty days [after his initial detention], a span long enough to cause serious psychological harm to an already vulnerable detainee. During my first meeting with him on March 6, I found a deeply weakened man, although a colleague from the Mezan Center had been able to see him two weeks before my intervention. The situation becomes even more alarming when considering detainees arrested in October 2023, who were [not] allowed their first meeting with a lawyer [until] eight months later, in June 2024. These prolonged waits exceed any internationally accepted standards and reveal an entrenched practice aimed at obstructing defense rights.
Q: Can you describe how his days in detention unfold?
Kassem: Dr. Abu Safiya’s detention is designed to crush both body and mind. Complete isolation [from the outside world] combines with surroundings meant to degrade. A damp underground cell is stripped of any comfort, lacking mattresses, blankets, and pillows. Ten detainees from Gaza share this cramped space while enduring food deprivation that exceeds all limits of human endurance. Their rations consist of two spoons of often burnt or spoiled rice with a small serving of hummus, a single tomato, and a fragment of bread. The absence of salt, sugar, coffee, cleaning supplies, and soap completes a carefully planned pattern of deprivation. On top of this, arbitrary searches, sudden intrusions, constant intimidation, and physical abuse happen regularly. Every part of this system works to destroy people, not just lock them up.
Q: What is Abu Safiya accused of by Israel?
Kassem: [The Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law] calls people like Dr. Abu Safiya “unlawful combatants.” This allows authorities to issue detention orders for up to six months [without charge], which can be extended [indefinitely]. These detainees do not receive a formal accusation because their holding relies on secret intelligence files that even their lawyers cannot see. The trials connected to this law lack real safeguards. They are often fake and conducted only by phone or video call, without any true cross-examination or presentation of evidence.
There is no real process. Rights are almost entirely missing. Hearings are just for show.
Q: How many prisoners from Gaza are now held in Israel? Are there differences in how they are treated compared to those from the West Bank?
Kassem: The imprisonment of Palestinians from Gaza carries especially severe characteristics, legally and physically. With about 2,700 prisoners now jailed, this group endures much harsher treatment than detainees from the West Bank. This difference shows itself in many ways. [For Palestinians in Gaza], often it’s their first time being held, their classification is distinct, and they are kept separate from other detainees.
While prison conditions are extreme for everyone, those for Gaza detainees reach unheard of severity. Their situation goes beyond any human standard, marked by constant deprivations, violence, torture, hunger, cold, filth, and humiliation. Sde Teiman camp [in the Negev desert], for example, is called a true slaughterhouse. Many prisoners have been killed or maimed. They lack medical care and basic hygiene, suffering from skin diseases and insect infestations. Isolation is complete, paired with insults and endless hunger. Detainees survive in deplorable conditions, exposed to freezing temperatures with windows always open in winter, without hot water, and half of them must sleep on the floor. Insufficient food is combined with a lack of proper clothing, limited to just one change every thirty or sixty days.
Q: What would Abu Safiya like to communicate to the world from detention?
Kassem: Dr. Abu Safiya represents human and professional resistance that goes beyond his detention. His moral strength [is] shown in a constant concern that reaches far beyond his own situation, embracing the shared suffering of the Palestinian people.
During our last meeting, his thoughts quickly went to his family, his children, his wife, and the ongoing destruction in Gaza. He spoke of his anguish over the war, the unsure length of his detention, but also a clear sense of history, believing this period will be remembered as a time of injustice that will end. His focus stays on the humanitarian and health crisis. He accurately described the hospital system’s breakdown, the desperate state of the wounded, the trauma of displaced people, and the ongoing lack of food and medicine. Even in prison, he keeps his sense of duty to patients and fellow doctors still working in impossible conditions. His appeal combines a demand for his own freedom and that of all detained medical staff with an urgent call to protect medical facilities in Gaza. This dual request shows his unchanging identity as both a doctor and a political prisoner, seeing his own release as part of a wider justice for his entire people.