Detained Gaza doctor becomes symbol of Israel's legal gray zone

A photograph of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya walking through rubble toward an Israel Defense Forces tank became one of the last public images of the Gaza physician before he disappeared from view. More than 500 days later, the former director of Kamal Adwan Hospital remained in Israeli detention without formal charges or a trial, a case that has come to stand for the legal gray zone surrounding wartime arrests.

Israeli forces raided Kamal Adwan Hospital in Mashrou’ Beit Lahiya on Dec. 27, 2024, and detained Abu Safiya along with other staff and patients, according to Amnesty International. Amnesty said the hospital was the last functioning major medical facility in North Gaza governorate at the time of the raid, and that the assault put it out of service. A United Nations human-rights communication later said Abu Safiya was held under Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law, with an Israeli magistrate’s court in Ashkelon extending his detention without charge on Jan. 9, 2025, until Feb. 13. The same communication said a ban on meeting a lawyer was extended until Jan. 22.

Israel has said Abu Safiya was apprehended on suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities and for holding a rank in Hamas, and has said hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were hiding inside the hospital under his management. That accusation sits at the center of a dispute over whether he was a civilian doctor caught in a military sweep or a figure with a militant role. A resurfaced image circulated in Israeli media later showed him in a Hamas uniform and identified him as a colonel in Hamas’s Military Medical Services.

Rights groups and United Nations experts have cast the case as part of a wider pattern in Gaza, where hospitals, doctors, and patients have been pulled directly into the war. In January 2025, UN experts said the raid showed a severe disregard for the right to health in Gaza and called for an end to the assault on Kamal Adwan. Human Rights Watch said Abu Safiya was arrested in December 2024 and reportedly faced assault in detention, while also describing broader arbitrary detention, torture, and mistreatment of Palestinian healthcare workers.

The practical effect has been severe. Kamal Adwan’s removal from service left northern Gaza with one less functioning hospital at a moment when the strip’s medical system was already collapsing under bombardment, displacement, and shortages. Abu Safiya’s absence did not only remove a doctor from a ward; it stripped a battered health system of one of the few senior physicians tied to its last major hospital in the north.