A prominent doctor who became the voice of Palestinians under siege in Gaza and was arrested by Israeli forces in December has seen his detention extended without charge, his family and legal representatives announced Thursday.
The family and supporters of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, hoped he would be released as part of a ceasefire deal, along with dozens of medical professionals arrested during Israel’s offensive in the Palestinian enclave.
According to an X post from the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, a Gaza-based legal group, an Israeli court “ex officio approved” the extension of Abu Safiya’s detention for another six months during a closed-door hearing.
In a separate statement, on behalf of Abu Safiya, his family also said his administrative detention had been extended. Israel has not commented on this matter.
“There has been one shock after another, and the magnitude of the pain is indescribable,” Elias Abu Safiya, Abu Safiya’s son, told NBC News on WhatsApp on Thursday. “I don’t know how I can sleep while my father is worried, how I can eat while my father is hungry, and how I can live my normal life.”
Abu Safiya’s family and supporters hoped and expected that he would be among the estimated 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Israel agreed on Monday to exchange 48 hostages held by Hamas as part of a ceasefire agreement.
The Israeli military initially denied that Abu Safiya was in its custody, but in a statement released in January it said, without providing evidence, that he had been involved in “terrorist activities” and held “a rank” within Hamas that made Kamal Adwan Hospital a stronghold during the war.
Abu Safiya’s son and his colleagues, including MedGlobal, a Chicago-based nonprofit that has worked for years in partnership with local caregivers in Gaza and organizes volunteer medical missions to the enclave, have rejected the allegations. Abu Safiya was MedGlobal’s lead doctor in Gaza before his detention.
Before his detention in December 2024, Abu Safiya warned that Israeli strikes were endangering patients, doctors and civilian shelters, calling on the world to intervene to “protect the health system.” He refused to leave his patients, even as tanks and bulldozers surrounded his hospital.
Abu Safiya was last seen in Gaza in December, walking from Kamal Adwan Hospital toward Israeli tanks. Video verified by NBC News showed Abu Safiya, a lone figure in a white doctor’s coat, moving down a rubble-strewn street surrounded by bombed buildings. The footage is believed to have captured the moments before his arrest by Israeli soldiers.
After detention orders in Abu Safiya’s case were upheld by an Israeli court in March, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights maintained his innocence, saying in a press release that he “only performed medical and administrative tasks at Kamal Adwan Hospital.”
Al Mezan claims that Abu Safiya reported torture and inhumane living conditions to a lawyer who was previously able to visit him in Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank.
A spokesperson for the Israeli Prison Service told NBC News that it does not provide details regarding “the identity, conditions or legal status of prisoners and detainees.”
The Israeli military responded to the allegations by saying that it acts in accordance with domestic and international law and that it “protects the rights of those detained in detention centers under its responsibility.”
Asked for comment on the matter, the Israeli military referred NBC News to the Israeli Ministry of Justice. In a statement, the ministry said it was not responsible for determining the identities of those released.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Healthcare Workers Watch, an initiative that documents detentions in Gaza, said in a press release that 55 medical workers, including 24 nurses and seven doctors, were on the lists of Gaza detainees expected to be released. It could not immediately be confirmed whether all were.
At least 115 medical workers remain in Israeli custody, as well as the remains of four people who died while in Israeli custody, he said in the press release issued Monday.
More than 9,000 Palestinians remain in Israeli prisons, according to data released by HaMoked, an Israeli human rights organization.
Many of them are held in “administrative detention”. according to the organization – a practice in which Israeli authorities detain people without trial or other customary legal procedures, often on the basis of so-called secret evidence that they often do not share with the detainees, their families or their legal representatives. Their fate is among the questions not addressed in President Donald Trump’s plan.
“We cannot sleep easy or contemplate the colossal task of rebuilding Gaza’s destroyed health system until he and all of our health colleagues have returned home safely,” Joseph Belliveau, executive director of MedGlobal, said in a statement shared with NBC News on Monday.
