Statement Calling for the Release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security strongly condemns the unjustified arrest and continued detention of pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya by Israeli authorities. Dr. Abu Safiya, the Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in North Gaza, was arrested on December 27, 2024, during a military raid on the facility—the last functioning hospital in Northern Gaza at the time.

The Lemkin Institute views the systematic targeting, disappearance, and torture of medical personnel such as Dr. Abu Safiya as a central component of the destruction of the conditions of life necessary for the survival of the Palestinian population in Gaza. Such actions not only violate the Geneva Conventions but also serve as prima facie evidence of genocidal intent to dismantle the healthcare infrastructure essential for human security. We demand the immediate release of Dr. Safiya, along with all other Palestinians currently being detained as “security prisoners,” meaning prisoners who are classified as such because the Israeli state considers their detention necessary for reasons of “security.” 

Israeli law enforcement stormed Dr. Abu Safiya’s place of work and arrested him along with several other members of the Kamal Adwan Hospital medical team on 27 December 2024. They placed him in incommunicado detention, denying him the right to contact a lawyer for 47 days. During that period, Dr. Abu Safiya endured torture and ill-treatment at the hands of the prison guards, including 20 days in solitary confinement. He was also not informed of the crime he was charged with committing. As of this writing, he has still not been charged with a specific crime or given a trial. 

Dr. Safiya’s hospital is no stranger to Israeli violence. In December of 2023, Israel bombed the hospital, causing significant damage to the building. Then, in October of 2024 ‒ two months prior to Dr. Safiya’s arrest ‒ Israel shelled the third floor of the hospital, killing two infants, and ordered all patients to gather in the courtyard. After refusing to evacuate the patients, Dr. Safiya was held by the Israeli army during their raid of the hospital, in which they arrested 57 hospital staff members. An intentional attack on a hospital is a war crime. 

Dr. Safiya’s refusal to comply with orders to put his patients in danger did not go unpunished. That same day, Israeli troops struck the hospital with a drone in apparent retaliation, killing Dr. Safiya’s 15-year-son. Speaking to journalists afterward, Dr. Safiya said, “I refused to leave the hospital and sacrifice my patients, so the army punished me by killing my son.”

At the time of his arrest in December of 2024, Dr. Abu Safiya was providing essential medical care to Gazan children at the only remaining hospital in North Gaza. Based on the absence of any criminal charges, we can only conclude that the crime committed by Dr. Abu Safiya was providing life-saving and life-sustaining care to Palestinian children. Treating his work as criminal is an inevitable corollary of genocidal ideology. For the success of the genocidal project, it is important for the genocidaire to prevent a new generation of the targeted group from reaching adulthood. Anyone saving the lives of the youngest members of the targeted group therefore stands in the way of the genocidal project and is treated as a threat. The Israeli state and society routinely dehumanize Palestinian children, most recently describing them as terrorists in order to justify indiscriminate bombings of residential neighbourhoods and the targeted murders of children, many under the age of 12. In such a genocidal system, criminalizing a pediatrician makes perfect sense. 

Dr. Abu Safiya has now been detained for over a year. Since his unlawful arrest, his case has garnered international attention. It prompted Palestinian Knesset member Dr. Ahmad Tibi of the Hadash-Ta’al party to demand Dr. Safiya’s release in the Knesset in December 2024. Dr. Tibi also called on Knesset members to join him in condemning those inciting the arrest of doctors and medical personnel in Gaza and the West Bank. Members of the Knesset instead demanded that Dr. Tibi's claims be ignored. 

Dr. Abu Safiya is currently being held under the “unlawful combatant” law, which empowers the Israeli military to detain Palestinians on suspicion of being “unlawful combatants.”  While calling for Dr. Abu Safiya’s release, Dr. Tibi asserted that Israel specifically uses this law to target Palestinians, including nurses and doctors. He argued that this law exists to perpetuate oppression and torture. According to the United Nations Committee Against Torture (CAT), as of November 2025, 250 physicians had been detained as “unlawful combatants” since October 7, 2023.

In practice, the “unlawful combatant” law under which Dr. Abu Safiya is being held grants Israeli law enforcement carte blanche to arrest and hold anyone indefinitely without even having to fabricate charges. The law defines the term “unlawful combatant” as anyone who has taken part in hostilities, directly or indirectly, or who has been affiliated with a “force conducting hostilities against Israel.” As Amnesty International has documented, this law is being deployed arbitrarily to round up innocent civilians with no evidence of their engagement in or connection to hostilities. Even where no evidence exists, it is impossible for anyone held as an “unlawful combatant” to contest their detention, as the evidence against them is often deemed secret. This means that the evidence is submitted to the court without the detainee or their lawyer present, preventing detainees from contesting it or presenting alternative evidence.

The rights of those held as “unlawful combatants” to challenge their detention or receive legal representation are severely limited. Per December 2023 amendments to this law, suspected “unlawful combatants” can be denied the right to contact a lawyer for up to 180 days. They can be held without judicial review for up to 75 days. These amendments were initially temporary, but have been renewed several times. With these amendments, the law violates several international legal guarantees both in international humanitarian law and in international human rights law.  As of April of 2024, Israel was holding 1,650 Palestinians unjustly under this law. By April of 2025, this number had risen to over 3,400. Currently Israel is still holding 1,287 Palestinians under the law. 

In addition to those taken from Gaza and held as “unlawful combatants” there are also a large number of Palestinians – mainly from the West Bank – being held in administrative detention. An estimated 500 Gazans are being held without any designation. All of these people are also held indefinitely without charges or trials. As of early 2025, the number of Palestinians in administrative detention was 3,376. According to Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP), as of December 31, 2025 over half of all children being detained by Israel were being held in administrative detention. Whereas both administrative detainees and “unlawful combatants” are technically in administrative detention, those in the former category benefit from slightly stronger procedural protections under the law. Whether Israel respects those legal guarantees is a separate question entirely.

International humanitarian law only permits the administrative detention of civilians in occupied territories when it is “imperative for security.” The Lemkin Institute finds it difficult to imagine a scenario where the detention of a hardworking pediatrician and a large number of his coworkers falls within this legal boundary. 

Civilian medical personnel benefit from additional protections under international humanitarian law. Article 15 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions mandates their respect and protection and requires occupying powers to afford them assistance so that they can carry out their humanitarian functions to the best of their ability. It also prohibits occupying powers from requiring civilian medical personnel to give priority to any person’s treatment for anything other than medical grounds. Civilian medical personnel lose their right to these protections by committing acts “harmful to the enemy,” which by definition does not include any medical care.

Those who lose civilian or civilian medical protection under international humanitarian law due to direct participation in hostilities still benefit from certain protections if detained. Moreover, there is no justification under any area of international law for the indefinite detention of anyone without charges, without access to a lawyer, and without the opportunity to present one’s case in front of a court of law. Israel has created a legal black hole – similar to the U.S. concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay – in which it is disappearing thousands of Palestinians. 

The total number of Palestinian “security prisoners” numbered 10,863 as of September 2025. In addition to “unlawful combatants” and “administrative detainees,” there are thousands who are either charged but awaiting sentencing or who have been convicted of a criminal offence. The Lemkin Institute is demanding their release as well. Regardless of the fact that their right not to be detained arbitrarily without charge or trial has been respected, these individuals have also been and continue to be the victims of gross human rights abuses, including torture. Israel has tried, unsuccessfully, to keep this information from reaching the light of day.

Evidently in an effort to keep its mistreatment of prisoners hidden, Israel has banned the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from visiting Palestinians held in its prisons since October of 2023 for “security concerns.” Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz most recently renewed this ban on 31 October 2025. He cited allegations from Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency that prisoners are using ICRC personnel to pass information to armed groups as justification for this ban. It is unclear how this could possibly have happened, as the ICRC has been barred from visiting those imprisoned for over two years. The ICRC sets minimal standards for the detention of people and their treatment in places of armed conflict. It is in this context that its personnel visit those detained: to ensure those standards and the rights of detained people are being respected. 

The ICRC is neutral and independent. It does not take sides in any armed conflict and is engaged in monitoring conflict situations and ensuring humanitarian assistance for those affected by armed conflict and violence across the globe. A country barring the ICRC’s entry to its prisons is a country with something to hide. 

Regardless of the efforts to minimize the amount of information getting out of Israeli prisons about the treatment of Palestinian prisoners, many horrifying details have come to light. Many Palestinians detained by Israel following October 7, 2023 who have since been released have spoken to their own experiences and to what they witnessed while imprisoned. In January of 2026, B’Tselem published an updated report on the treatment of Palestinians classified as “security prisoners” in the Israeli prison system based on these testimonies. The details in this report are indescribably horrific. 

Released prisoners have reported widespread sexual assault within the prisons, including rape and the use of dogs trained to attack their genitals. According to testimony given to the CAT, minors imprisoned have also been sexually abused, prison guards have filmed sexually degrading videos of prisoners, and electrical shocks have been administered to the genitals of prisoners. The conditions in the prisons themselves are inhumane; prisoners are denied adequate food, water, and medical care, cells are overcrowded, prisoners are prevented from showering and forced to wear the same clothes for months at a time, and they are often forced to sleep on the floor year-round with no mattress or blanket to speak of. Physical and psychological abuse and torture have been institutionalized in the prison system, especially during interrogation. 

As of August of 2025, those conducting Israel Security Agency (ISA) interrogations had killed six Palestinians in the course of interrogations. ISA interrogations routinely involve torture, legally justified in Israeli law under the “necessity defence,” and the use of torture in such interrogations has increased since October 7, 2023. Interrogators employ a variety of torture techniques, including sleep deprivation, shackling detainees in stress positions, hanging interrogees by their hands, and sexual intimidation, in addition to general physical abuse such as beating or slapping. The different techniques are used simultaneously or cyclically, often for periods of days or weeks. Torture is subject to absolute prohibition in the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and this prohibition is nonderogable, even in cases of so-called “necessity.”

Many Palestinians, including doctors, have died in Israeli prisons since October of 2023. The exact number is unclear, but it is certainly