At least 160 healthcare workers from Gaza, including more than 20 doctors, are believed to still be inside Israeli detention facilities as the World Health Organisation expressed deep concern about their wellbeing and safety.
Healthcare Workers Watch (HWW), a Palestinian medical NGO, said it had confirmed that 162 medical staff remained in Israeli detention, including some of Gaza’s most senior physicians, and a further 24 were missing after being taken from hospitals during the conflict.
Muath Alser, director of HWW, said the detention of large numbers of doctors, nurses, paramedics and other healthcare workers from Gaza was illegal under international law and was furthering the suffering of civilians by denying them medical expertise and care.
“Israel’s targeting of the healthcare workforce in this manner is having a devastating impact on the provision of healthcare to Palestinians, with extensive suffering, countless preventable deaths, and the effective eradication of whole medical specialities,” said Alser.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says it has verified that 297 healthcare workers from Gaza have been detained by the Israeli military since the war began, but the organisation had no updated data on how many have been released or remain in detention.
HWW says its data shows the number is slightly higher and that it has verified that 339 healthcare workers from Gaza have been detained by the Israeli military.
The WHO said it was “deeply concerned about the wellbeing and safety of Palestinian health workers in Israeli detention”, after reports that detainees in Israeli prison facilities were routinely subjected to violence and mistreatment.
A lawyer representing Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan hospital, whose detention by Israeli forces in December sparked international condemnation, recently said he had been allowed to visit Abu Safiya in detention in Ofer Prison in Ramallah for the first time and that he said he had been tortured, beaten and denied medical treatment.
The Guardian and the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) have also heard detailed testimony from seven senior doctors who claimed they were taken from hospitals, ambulances and checkpoints in Gaza, illegally transferred across the border into Israeli-run prison facilities and subjected to months of torture, beatings, starvation and inhumane treatment before being released without charge.
“Frankly, no matter how much I talk about what I experienced in detention, it is only a fraction of what truly happened,” said Dr Mohammed Abu Selmia, director of al-Shifa hospital, who was detained for seven months in Israeli prisons before being released without charge.
“I am talking about clubbing, being beaten with rifle butts and being attacked by dogs. There was little to no food, no personal hygiene, no soap inside the cells, no water, no toilet, no toilet paper … I saw people who were dying there … I was beaten so badly I couldn’t use my legs or walk. No day passes without torture.”
In a statement to the Guardian, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director general, condemned the ongoing detention of medical personnel by Israel and said he was deeply concerned for their welfare.
The UN’s human rights office (UNOCH) said Israel also must immediately release medical staff held arbitrarily and “end all practices that amount to enforced disappearances, torture and other ill-treatment”.
UNOCH has previously said “it is clear” that the detention of large numbers of healthcare workers by the Israeli military contributed to the collapse of the healthcare system in Gaza. Ajith Sunghay, head of office for the occupied Palestinian territory at UNOCH, said: “Those responsible for crimes under international law must be held to account.”
Under the Geneva conventions, the set of international laws that police the conduct of warring parties, doctors should be protected, not targeted or attacked during conflict and must be allowed to carry on providing medical care to those who need it.
Tedros said: “Health workers, facilities they work in, and patients they care for … must never be targets. In fact, under international humanitarian law, they should be actively protected.”
Two of Gaza’s most senior doctors – Dr Iyad al-Rantisi, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Kamal Adwan hospital, and Dr Adnan al-Bursh, head of the orthopaedic department at al-Shifa hospital – are known to have died in detention.
In the past, Israel has defended its military operations on Gaza’s healthcare system by claiming that hospitals were being used by Hamas as military command centres and that the healthcare workers who were detained were suspected.
Under international law, healthcare facilities can lose their protected status and become military targets if they are used for acts that are “harmful to the enemy”.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, has said that to date Israel has failed to substantiate these allegations.
The Guardian put all the doctors’ allegations relating to their detention to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which did not respond to the individual cases but provided a general statement in which it said it was “operating to restore security to the citizens of Israel, to bring home the hostages, and to achieve the objectives of the war while operating by international law.
“During the fighting in the Gaza Strip, suspects of terrorist activities were arrested. The relevant suspects have been taken for further detention and questioning in Israel. Those who are not involved in terrorist activity are released back to the Gaza Strip as soon as possible.”
The IDF said it provides each detainee with suitable clothing, a mattress, regular food and drink and that they have access to medical care. It also said that handcuffing of detainees occurs in accordance with IDF policies. It said it was aware of incidents where detainees had died in detention and that investigations are conducted for each of these deaths.
“The IDF acts in accordance with Israeli and international law in order to protect the rights of the detainees held in the detention and questioning facilities,” it said.
The doctors’ accounts are similar to those by other former Palestinian detainees of their time in Israeli detention, who describe systemic abuse and torture.
Earlier this month, an Israeli soldier was sentenced to seven months in prison for the abuse of detainees, the first conviction of its kind in Israel.
