On December 27, 2024, Israeli forces raided Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza and detained Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya — a pediatrician, neonatologist, and the hospital’s director. One year later, he remains imprisoned. No charges have been filed. No trial has been scheduled. No evidence justifying his detention has been made public.

Dr. Abu Safiya has been held under Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law, which permits indefinite detention without charge, trial, or meaningful access to due process. Human rights organizations have documented this law’s use as a mechanism for holding Palestinian civilians — including healthcare workers — outside the protections of ordinary criminal procedure.

In the weeks before his arrest, Dr. Abu Safiya had become one of the most prominent voices documenting conditions inside Gaza’s collapsing medical system. He spoke repeatedly from inside Kamal Adwan Hospital about fuel shortages, medicine depletion, the deaths of patients who could not be treated, and the systematic destruction of healthcare infrastructure. Despite repeated opportunities to evacuate, he chose to stay with his patients and colleagues until Israeli forces stormed the compound.

No evidence has been presented to substantiate the Israeli claim that he posed a security threat. The raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital itself resulted in the destruction of parts of the facility and the forcible removal of medical staff and patients — a documented pattern that the UN and multiple human rights bodies have characterized as the deliberate targeting of healthcare under the laws of war.

Dr. Abu Safiya treated children under bombardment and siege. He documented what was being done to his patients and his hospital. He stayed when he could have left. He has now been imprisoned for a year without charge for doing exactly what a doctor is supposed to do.