Medical charity demands release of Palestinian health workers held by Israel

GENEVA — Doctors Without Borders (MSF) called Monday for the immediate release of all Palestinian healthcare workers “arbitrarily detained” by Israel.“MSF is outraged by the treatment of healthcare workers, most of whom are being detained in dire conditions, without justification or cause,” the Geneva-based medical charity said in a statement.MSF joined calls for the release of Hussam Abu Safiya, a paediatrician and the director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, who has been held since December 2024.Abu Safia is in solitary confinement and has reportedly been tortured since being detained by Israel more than a year and a half ago, MSF said.His treatment “follows an appalling pattern of the Israeli authorities detaining and targeting medical staff across Palestine”, the group said.Israel said earlier this month that his detention was “lawful,” and rejected reports of him suffering with a life-threatening condition.The statement came after a United Nations investigative team and several UN rights experts raised the alarm about the case.About 50 people, including doctors, trade unionists and pro-Palestinian activists, gathered outside France’s foreign ministry in Paris on Thursday to call for his release.The Physicians for Human Rights Israel reports that more than 50 healthcare workers are currently being held in inhumane conditions by Israel, including 15 doctors. It has moved the Israeli Supreme Court for their release.According to Healthcare Workers Watch figures from April, 446 Palestinian healthcare workers have been unlawfully detained by Israeli forces since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023. Six have reportedly been killed in detention, their bodies still held by Israel.MSF also called for the “immediate and unconditional release” of Dr Mohammed Obeid, who was arrested by Israeli forces on October 26, 2024 while working at Kamal Adwan Hospital.MSF said the orthopaedic surgeon “has been detained in Israel for more than 600 days, in difficult conditions, and without any contact with his family.”It reiterated its call for his immediate and unconditional release.“The practice of arbitrarily detaining, torturing and abusing Palestinian medical staff in Israel is unacceptable,” the non-governmental organization said.“We call for the release of all arbitrarily detained medical personnel immediately. Pending their release, they must be granted access to adequate medical care and dignified detention conditions.”MSF noted that “for too long, too many world leaders have failed to condemn Israel’s conduct in Palestine. Silence has become complicity”.It added that all arbitrarily detained medical personnel must be granted access to adequate medical care and dignified conditions pending their release from detention.Earlier this month, a UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry ⁠on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention both called for Israel to release Abu Safia, and all medical personnel arbitrarily detained.His lawyer, Nasser Odeh, warned that the doctor’s health was in danger, and that he showed signs of regular torture. Israel is holding the paediatrician without trial, having classed him as an “unlawful combatant”.Before he was abducted by Israeli forces, Abu Safia had been a prominent voice highlighting the effects of Israel’s war on Gaza’s healthcare system.MSF added that 15 of their colleagues had been killed since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas.