Gaza pediatrician held in Israeli prisons since 2024: ‘They brought me here to kill me’
2 min read
from SaveDrAbuSafiya.com
The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza kept his patients alive under siege. Israel has imprisoned him without charge ever since — and his lawyer now says he is being beaten to death in an interrogation cell.
“This is the last time you will see me. They brought me here to kill me. I don’t see myself surviving. This is the end,” Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya to his lawyer, as reported by Physicians for Human Rights–Israel July 2, 2026.
He is the doctor who would not leave his patients.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is a pediatrician and neonatologist who became director of Kamal Adwan Hospital — for a time the last major functioning health facility in northern Gaza.
Through more than 80 days of siege and bombardment in late 2024, he kept the hospital running and repeatedly refused Israeli orders to evacuate while patients and newborns remained in his care.
The war had already taken his family. In late October 2024, his 15-year-old son Ibrahim was killed by an Israeli strike at the hospital. Dr. Abu Safiya buried his son and kept working.
On Dec. 27, 2024, Israeli forces stormed Kamal Adwan and detained him. He was first taken to Sde Teiman — the military base notorious for the abuse of Palestinian detainees — and has since been moved repeatedly between prisons.
In February 2025 he was placed under Israel’s “Unlawful Combatants” Law, which permits indefinite detention without charge or trial. To this day, no charge has ever been brought against him.
He is not alone. More than 430 Palestinian healthcare workers have been detained since October 2023; roughly 95 remain held, many without charge. Dr. Abu Safiya has become the face of a medical profession under attack.
He is one of hundreds of health care workers targeted since October 2023.
Dr. Abu Safiya’s case is not an isolated one. It sits inside a documented pattern of attacks on Palestinian medical staff — the people whose protection under international humanitarian law is supposed to be absolute.
You can learn more about the campaign to free Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and all detained Palestinian health care workers at the website, SaveDrAbuSafiya.com.
Read by Robin Bloomgarden for KEPW-WholeCommunity.News.
