'This is the grim choice every Palestinian medical worker faces: serve and be targeted, or flee and abandon your patients to die.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a pediatrician from northern Gaza, is one of those still detained. He’s been imprisoned without charge since December. His family tells me he’s still wearing the same winter clothes he was taken in, now threadbare from seven months of captivity. He’s lost an alarming amount of weight on two spoonfuls of rice a day and faced severe abuse. He has no access to medication. No access to medical care. Dr. Hussam should be at a hospital helping to lead Gaza’s recovery. Instead, he’s in a prison cell.
What was his crime? Staying. He refused to abandon newborns on ventilators at Kamal Adwan Hospital. He stayed and saved lives in a hospital under attack. For that, he was kidnapped.
He is not alone.
Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan, one of only two cardiologists left in northern Gaza and director of the Indonesian hospital, was killed this month by a precise Israeli airstrike on his home in Gaza City that targeted the floors where he and his family lived and left the other parts of the block untouched.
Dr. Ahmed Qandeel, a respected senior surgeon and mentor, was killed just over a week ago in an airstrike in Gaza City.
Dr. Adnan Al‑Bursh, a well-known orthopedic surgeon, was abducted, severely beaten in custody (leaving him with broken ribs and unable to walk or use the toilet independently, according to his fellow detainees’ testimony), and found dead under suspicious circumstances in Israeli custody.
(Note from me: These "suspicious circumstances" is what other reports have called "likely raped to death". According to Israeli human rights organisation, HaMoked, "Ofer Prison guards dragged Al-Bursh and dumped him in the prison yard, naked from the waist down, bleeding and unable to stand. Some of the other prisoners carried Al-Bursh to a nearby room, and he died moments later."
The choice to say "suspicious circumstances" was no doubt borne out of extreme caution and fear of retribution.)
There are too many stories to recount.
As the UN Human Rights Office said, ''The killing, detention and enforced disappearance of health workers in Gaza, in parallel with the systematic attacks and destruction of hospitals and other medical facilities, has had a devastating impact on the people.''
Each time a Palestinian doctor is killed or detained, it isn’t just a personal loss – it’s a collapse of community care. Patients are left without treatment. Wards are left without leadership. Babies in incubators lose their only chance of survival. A respected and dignified member of society is stripped of protected status. The death of a physician in Gaza means dozens, sometimes hundreds, of preventable deaths in the weeks and months that follow.'
https://zeteo.com/p/israel-war-medical-system-doctors
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