Israel says Gaza hospital chief Hussam Abu Safiya is not dying

Geneva: Israel said on Friday that the detention of a Gaza hospital director, who has been held since December 2024, was “lawful”, and rejected reports that he suffered a life-threatening condition.

“At no stage of Hussam Abu Safiya’s detention has he exhibited any indication of a life-threatening condition,” Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva said on X, accusing him of being a colonel in Hamas.

The statement came after a United Nations investigative team and several UN rights experts this week raised the alarm about the case.

The paediatrician and director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital rose to prominence in 2024 by posting about the dire conditions in his besieged hospital in Beit Lahia during a major Israeli offensive.

On December 27 that year, Israeli forces began an assault on the facility, labelling the only functioning hospital in northern Gaza at the time a Hamas “terrorist centre”, and arresting dozens of medical staff, including Abu Safiya.

Four independent UN rights experts said in a statement on Tuesday that “Dr. Abu Safiya’s ongoing arbitrary detention without charges or trial is a reflection of Israel’s systematic targeting of Palestinian health workers”.

The UN’s independent Commission of Inquiry (CoI) on the rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories issued a separate statement on Wednesday voicing “grave concern at credible reports that Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya… has been subjected to continued and severe abuse” during his detention.

It called for his “immediate, unconditional and safe release” and urged Israeli authorities to provide him immediate independent medical care.

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The CoI, which has previously accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, maintained that the reported mistreatment of Abu Safiya fitted into that “broader pattern of violations”.

The Israeli statement said that “no indications were found to support the claims raised regarding his condition”.

Abu Safiya had been “examined by medical personnel upon his arrival at Nitzan Detention Centre on June 24, 2026, and several times thereafter”, it said.

He “remains under continuous medical supervision and receives treatment in accordance with the professional determination of medical personnel”.