“This is the end. I don’t see myself surviving. They brought me here to kill me.” These were the words
of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya to his lawyer earlier this month. Abu Safiya
was the director of the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza. Eighteen
months ago he was seized by Israeli forces and has since been held
without charge or trial. He reports being struck with hammers and
batons, daily beatings and loss of consciousness. The latest images of
him show a much gaunter man than the one who had been the voice of
besieged healthcare workers in Gaza, doing their jobs in impossible
circumstances.
In June, Abu Safiya was transferred to Rakefet prison,
an underground facility first built to hold senior organised crime
figures, then closed on the grounds that it was inhumane. It was reopened in late 2023
by the far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Abu Safiya
and the other Palestinian prisoners there never see daylight, a violation of the Geneva conventions. Across the Palestinian territories and Israel, about 3,500
prisoners like him are held under “administrative detention” that can
be renewed every six months, indefinitely. Nearly 200 of them are
children. Once a Palestinian is detained under these rules, they are
essentially abducted by the state.
“Real hell” is what is experienced
once detained. Ali al-Samoudi, a Palestinian journalist, was released
earlier this year, unrecognisable. He had lost 60kg, about half of his
body weight. “Prison today is hell in every sense of the word,” he told
CNN. “Everything they practised with us was punishment and revenge.”
The scale of abuse, torture and death in Israeli prisons is well documented... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/13/israel-prison-torture-death-hussam-abu-safiya-palestine
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