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gaza hospitals
Newly Released Gaza Hospital Director Alleges 'Almost Daily Torture' in Israeli Detention
The hospital director, who'd been held without trial since Israeli forces detained him in November, said that he and others were subjected to torture, psychological humiliation, and severe undernourishment.
Jul 01, 2024
The director of Gaza's main hospital said at a press conference on Monday that he was tortured while being held without charges for the last seven months at an Israeli detention center.
Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of the Al-Shifa hospital, once Gaza's main medical center, made the claims after he and 54 other Palestinian detainees were released and arrived back to the Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces had raided the hospital in November and alleged that Abu Salmiya was involved in making it a Hamas command center. They later destroyed the hospital.
Abu Salmiya said detention guards broke his finger and beat him to the point that his head bled—and that he wasn't the only one.
"Our detainees have been subjected to all kinds of torture behind bars," Abu Salmiya said. "There was almost daily torture."
There was "daily physical and psychological humiliation," he added.
He also said that they were severely underfed, surviving on nothing more than a loaf of bread per day. He said that all of the detainees had lost at least 30 kilograms (66 pounds).
"Our detainees have been subjected to all kinds of torture behind bars. There was almost daily torture."
Israeli forces seized Abu Salmiya from a United Nations convoy on November 22. They took him to court three times while in detainment but brought no charges and allowed him no lawyer, Abu Salmiya said.
His detention in November followed an Israeli siege of Al-Shifa hospital, which Israeli officials said had become a Hamas control center. Though weapons were found at the hospital, an investigation by The Washington Post in December showed that the evidence fell short of revealing a command center, and that key claims the Israelis had made to justify the siege turned out to be incorrect.
Israeli forces attacked the hospital again in late March, killing hundreds and leaving the facility mostly destroyed. Several mass graves were discovered near the hospital site in the weeks that followed.
Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians since the war started, leading to "intolerable overcrowding" of its facilities, as Haaretzreported in February. Many detainees are held without charges in what is called "administrative detention."
At least 40 Palestinians have died in Israeli detention during the war, according to Addameer, a Palestinian watchdog group. Salmiya said Monday that some had been killed in interrogation cells, Al Jazeerareported.
At least one other doctor was among those released on Monday: Bassam Miqdad, head of the orthopedic unit at Gaza European hospital in Khan Younis.
In April, Adnan Ahmad Albursh, a 50-year-old Palestinian surgeon, died in Israeli detention, according to Palestinian officials and rights groups. He had been the head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa hospital. Overall, hundreds of healthcare workers have been killed during the war.
Israeli officials and political figures from various parties denounced the release of the 55 detainees, which was reportedly done to make space in the overcrowded detention centers.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right minister in charge of Israel's police and prison service, called the release of the detainees a case of "security negligence" and blamed another ministry. Benny Gantz, an opposition figure who recently resigned from the war cabinet, said whoever released the detainees should be fired and that government offices should be made available to "free up space and budget for prisoners," according to Al Jazeera.
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'Hospitals Are Not Battlegrounds': UN Relief Chief Sounds Alarm as Israel Raids al-Shifa
"The protection of newborns, patients, medical staff, and all civilians must override all other concerns," said Martin Griffiths, the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator.
Nov 15, 2023
The head of the United Nations' emergency relief operations said Wednesday that he was "appalled" by news of the Israeli military's raid of Gaza's largest hospital, where hundreds of patients and healthcare workers and thousands of displaced people are sheltering.
"The protection of newborns, patients, medical staff, and all civilians must override all other concerns," Martin Griffiths, the U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, wrote on social media. "Hospitals are not battlegrounds."
Israeli forces' raid of al-Shifa Hospital early Wednesday came days after they encircled the facility and began bombarding it, accusing Hamas of using the hospital and tunnels beneath it for military operations.
The U.S. backed Israel's assertion on Tuesday, with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby telling reporters that "we have information that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad used some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and support their military operations and to hold hostages."
Asked to provide specific evidence, Kirby cited "a variety of intelligence sources" but declined to publicize "a whole lot of granular detail on that."
Hospitals are protected from military attack under international law and can only lose their protected status if they are shown to have been used for "an act harmful to the enemy." Human Rights Watch argued in a report released ahead of Wednesday's raid that the Israeli government has not provided sufficient evidence to justify its attacks on al-Shifa and other northern Gaza hospitals, most of which have ceased functioning due to a lack of fuel and other supplies.
An emergency room employee at al-Shifa told Al Jazeera that during their raid, Israeli soldiers "detained and brutally assaulted some of the men who were taking refuge at the hospital."
"Israeli forces took the detained men naked and blindfolded," the worker added. "[They] did not bring any aid or supplies, they only brought terror and death."
On Tuesday, according to Gaza officials, around 170 bodies were buried in a mass grave in the courtyard of al-Shifa, as there was no other way to safely bury them outside the hospital compound because of Israeli attacks and firefights with Hamas. A surgeon at the hospital toldReuters that, due to lack of refrigeration, the bodies "were generating an unbearable stench and posing a risk of infection."
"The Health Ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, have died since Shifa's emergency generator ran out of fuel Saturday," The Associated Pressreported Wednesday. "Another 36 babies are at risk of dying because there is no power for incubators, according to the ministry."
Israel's bombing campaign, ground invasion, and siege have killed more than 11,000 people across the Gaza Strip, but the recent attacks on the enclave's hospitals have made it impossible for Gaza health officials to reach the facilities to count the dead and wounded. Thousands more are believed to have been killed since the death toll was updated last week.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said early Wednesday that "we've lost touch again with health personnel" at al-Shifa amid Israel's raid.
"We're extremely worried for their and their patients' safety," he added.
Facing growing accusations of war crimes, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) called its raid on al-Shifa a "precise and targeted operation against Hamas." In the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel last month, the IDF has claimed repeatedly that it is targeting militants even as it has decimated Gaza's civilian infrastructure, bombing homes, medical facilities, schools, bakeries, and the strip's largest refugee camp.
A confidential memo from the Dutch Embassy in Tel Aviv states that Israel is "deliberately causing massive destruction to the infrastructure and civilian centers" of Gaza in an effort to "showcase credible military force" to "Iran and its proxies," according toPolitico.
Israel's strategy, the memo states, violates "international treaties and laws of war."
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Amid War Crimes Charges, Human Rights Watch Says Israel Must 'End Attacks on Hospitals'
"Israel's broad-based attack on Gaza's healthcare system is an attack on the sick and the injured, on babies in incubators, on pregnant people, on cancer patients. These actions need to be investigated as war crimes."
Nov 14, 2023
Human Rights Watch on Tuesday demanded that the Israeli government immediately cease its deadly attacks on Gaza's hospitals, arguing they're part of a far-reaching and unlawful assault on the territory's crumbling healthcare system.
In a new report, HRW examines the impacts of the Israeli bombing campaign, ground invasion, and siege on Gaza's medical personnel and facilities, a majority of which have stopped functioning due to airstrike damage or lack of critical supplies, from fuel to anesthetics.
"Israel's repeated attacks damaging hospitals and harming healthcare workers, already hard hit by an unlawful blockade, have devastated Gaza's healthcare infrastructure," said A. Kayum Ahmed, special adviser on the right to health at Human Rights Watch. "The strikes on hospitals have killed hundreds of people and put many patients at grave risk because they're unable to receive proper medical care."
Over the past week, Israeli forces have surrounded and intensified their bombardment of several hospitals in northern Gaza including al-Shifa, the enclave's largest medical facility. Israel has also bombed ambulances and people desperately attempting to flee hospitals as they've come under attack.
"On November 3, the Israeli military struck a marked ambulance just outside of Gaza City's al-Shifa hospital," HRW said. "Video footage and photographs taken shortly after the strike and verified by Human Rights Watch show a woman on a stretcher in the ambulance and at least 21 dead or injured people in the area surrounding the ambulance, including at least 5 children."
"An IDF spokesperson said in a televised interview that day: 'Our forces saw terrorists using ambulances as a vehicle to move around. They perceived a threat and accordingly we struck that ambulance,'" the group added. "Human Rights Watch did not find evidence that the ambulance was being used for military purposes."
HRW similarly questioned Israeli assertions that Hamas is using Gaza's hospitals, including al-Shifa, for military operations.
Targeting hospitals is a war crime under international law, but medical facilities can lose their protected status if they're used to commit an "act harmful to the enemy," according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
HRW argued that Tuesday that "no evidence put forward" by the Israeli government thus far "would justify depriving hospitals and ambulances of their protected status under international humanitarian law."
"When a journalist at a news conference showing video footage of damage to the Qatar Hospital sought additional information to verify voice recordings and images presented, the Israeli spokesperson said, 'Our strikes are based on intelligence,'" HRW said. "Even if accurate, Israel has not demonstrated that the ensuing hospital attacks were proportionate."
The group said Israel "should end attacks on hospitals" and urged the United Nations' Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the International Criminal Court to investigate.
"Israel's broad-based attack on Gaza's healthcare system is an attack on the sick and the injured, on babies in incubators, on pregnant people, on cancer patients," said Ahmed. "These actions need to be investigated as war crimes."
The new analysis came amid horrific reports of the impact that Israel's assault is having on healthcare workers, patients, and displaced people seeking refuge from near-constant airstrikes.
Reutersreported that people trapped inside al-Shifa Hospital "plan to start burying bodies within the hospital compound" on Tuesday "because the situation has become untenable." The World Health Organization said over the weekend that the facility is "not functioning as a hospital anymore" due to power outages and a lack of supplies, which have caused the deaths of a number of patients—including premature babies.
Dr. Ahmed Al Mokhallalati, a surgeon at al-Shifa, told Reuters that "the bodies were generating an unbearable stench and posing a risk of infection."
"Unfortunately there is no approval from the Israelis to even bury the bodies within the hospital area," he said. "Today ... civilians started digging within the hospital to try and bury the bodies on their own responsibility without any arrangements by the Israeli side. Burying 120 bodies needs a lot of equipment, it can't be by hand efforts and by single-person efforts. It will take hours and hours to be able to bury all these bodies."
Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said that on Tuesday morning, "bullets were fired into one of three MSF premises located near al-Shifa hospital and sheltering MSF staff and their families—over 100 people, including 65 children, who ran out of food last night."
"Thousands of civilians, medical staff, and patients are currently trapped in hospitals and other locations under fire in Gaza City; they must be protected and afforded safe passage if they wish to leave," the group added. "Above that, there must be a total and immediate cease-fire."
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