An Israeli human rights group is petitioning for the country’s Supreme Court to order the release of 14 doctors from Gaza who have been imprisoned for more than a year without charges.
Among them is Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, who has been detained without charges since December 2024 and this week had his detention extended by a district court, which Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) described as “unlawful.”
On Thursday, PHRI said that Israel’s Supreme Court must recognize “the special protections afforded to doctors and medical workers under international humanitarian law, as well as the urgent need for medical personnel from Gaza to carry out their duties and help rehabilitate the extensive damage inflicted on Gaza’s healthcare system.”
They called on the court to revoke the detentions of Safiya and 13 other doctors, who include pediatricians, orthopedic specialists, and surgeons.
Nearly all of the hospitals in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed during more than two years of genocidal war by Israel, and more than 1,500 healthcare workers have been killed in what UN experts have described as a “medicide.”
PHRI said that hundreds of medical workers have been targeted and arrested by the Israel Defense Forces without charge, “effectively paralyzing an entire healthcare system already made fragile by the ongoing destruction.”
“Over the past two years, testimonies from detained medical workers have described dire conditions of incarceration, including starvation and abuse amounting to torture across Israeli detention facilities,” the group said, noting that at least five of them had died in custody.
PHRI said it had submitted a request to Israel’s Supreme Court to reconsider the detention orders, but upon receiving no response, it filed a petition.
“Despite protections under international humanitarian law, and an ongoing ceasefire, doctors from Gaza are still being held without any due process, subjected to severe conditions amounting to torture,” the group said. “The continued detention of doctors who could provide urgently needed medical care—actively hinders the rehabilitation of the healthcare system and prevents any meaningful recovery.”
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