Israel released Muhammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital, on Monday along with dozens of other former detainees from Gaza, prompting a backlash in Israel and fears for the doctor’s life.

Meanwhile, international media reports and statements made by Israeli officials suggested that Israel may soon scale back its military operations in Gaza.

But for Palestinians who have endured nearly nine months of genocide, there has been no respite from the Israeli violence that has claimed nearly 38,000 lives, with thousands more missing and feared dead.

Amid intense bombardment throughout Gaza, Israel this week ordered the forcible transfer of Palestinians from eastern Khan Younis and Rafah in southern Gaza, encompassing around a third of the coastal enclave’s territory and affecting a quarter of a million people.

The European Gaza Hospital, the largest medical facility in southern Gaza, is in the area that Israel ordered evacuated, forcing health workers to transfer patients and displaced families out of the hospital campus. Israel later denied that it ordered the evacuation of patients and staff from the hospital.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Tuesday that the hospital is no longer functional “because so many staff members have evacuated” and stressed the need for safe transport of the disabled, elderly and sick.

“Not all people may be in a position to depart, and any civilian who stays behind remains protected by international humanitarian law,” the Red Cross added. “The reality is that there is no safe place in Gaza.”

UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, has been cut off from accessing a key aid distribution center in Gaza City’s al-Tuffah neighborhood amid the fierce fighting.

Hospital director released

Muhammad Abu Salmiya, the director of al-Shifa hospital, was released by Israel on Monday after being arrested in November while attempting to evacuate to southern Gaza and held without charge ever since.

Back in Gaza, Abu Salmiya said that he was brought before a judge several times “and even there they presented no evidence.”

He said that “Israel arrested me as if they had caught a big fish; now it turns out that everything was a lie and an illusion, and they inflated the whole affair.”

Abu Salmiya added that prison authorities acted vindictively against prisoners, “including medical staff, some of whom paid with their lives, like Dr. Iyad al-Rantisi and Dr. Adnan al-Bursh.”

Iyad al-Rantisi, the head of obstetrics and gynecology at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, was detained by Israeli troops on 11 November. It was revealed last month, following the expiration of an Israeli gag order, that he died while being interrogated six days after his arrest.

Adnan al-Bursh, the head of orthopedics at al-Shifa hospital, was detained by Israeli forces at Al-Awda Hospital in Jabaliya, northern Gaza, in mid-December and died at Ofer prison in the West Bank on 19 April.

His death was first reported around two weeks later when a released detainee said that al-Bursh had been tortured and killed. The Israel Prison Service later confirmed the date of his death.

In December, following the Israeli military’s invasion and capture of al-Shifa hospital, independent UN human rights experts accused Israel of waging an “unrelenting war” on Gaza’s health system. Israeli forces withdrew from al-Shifa hospital in April, leaving it in ruins.

In advance of its attack, Israel had claimed there was a vast underground complex run by Palestinian fighters under al-Shifa hospital. It even produced an elaborate animation of the supposed multilevel command center it claimed was the “main headquarters for Hamas’ terrorist activity.”

Gaza’s medical facilities have been repeatedly targeted and health workers, patients and their companions have been killed, injured, arrested and disappeared.

Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian surgeon who worked in Gaza in the first weeks of the ongoing offensive, has said that the health sector is a primary target in Israel’s genocide in order to expedite the ethnic cleansing of the coastal enclave.

More than 50 “highly qualified specialists” are among the some 500 heath workers killed since early October, according to Reuters, costing Gaza “a network of knowledge that will take years to rebuild.” At least seven of those specialists were killed in hospitals.

After his release to Gaza, Abu Salmiya vowed to return to work and rebuild al-Shifa hospital “as it was before and even better.”

“This hospital will be a beacon of healthcare for all our community in Palestine and the Gaza Strip,” he said.

“Baseless and fabricated”

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the release of Abu Salmiya without charge “proves beyond [a] reasonable doubt that the [Israeli military’s] pretext for raiding and destroying al-Shifa hospital was entirely baseless and fabricated.”

Israel alleged at the time of Abu Salmiya’s arrest that he had allowed Hamas to exploit the hospital for armed resistance purposes.

Physicians for Human Rights Israel said on Tuesday that Israel arbitrarily detained Palestinians in Gaza, “including medical personnel, who are protected under international law.”

Detained medical personnel “were presented as supposed evidence that al-Shifa hospital’s medical personnel were involved in military activities, thereby forfeiting the hospital’s right to special protection.”

The group said that Abu Salmiya’s release and his testimony of Israel’s widespread use of torture and humiliation, sometimes resulting in death, “highlights the urgent need to free all detained healthcare workers and others who were unjustly arrested and incarcerated.”

The Euro-Med Monitor compared Abu Salmiya’s experience to that of Mohammed El Halabi, the Gaza-based program director for the international charity World Vision, who was convicted in 2022 after a sham trial lasting six years over trumped up charges of funneling resources to Hamas. Failing to secure a plea deal, Israel resorted to convicting El Halabi on the basis of secret evidence.

Israel has attempted to manufacture cases against other senior medical officials in Gaza.

In December, Israel released an alleged videotaped confession made by Ahmed al-Kahlout, the director of Kamal Adwan hospital who was arrested at the facility days earlier.

Israel claimed that al-Kahlout admitted to being a senior figure in the armed wing of Hamas and that the medical facility was used by the group as a command hub.

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said at the time that the allegedly coerced statement was “a desperate and ridiculous attempt” by Israel to justify its crimes, especially those against Gaza’s health sector, including its fabricated allegations concerning al-Shifa hospital and its staff.

The release of the director of al-Shifa indicates that one of the central propaganda claims of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has fallen apart.

“The release of Dr. Abu Salmiya shows they have absolutely nothing against him and al-Shifa,” Euro-Med Monitor stated.

Given the backlash in Israel following his release, Euro-Med Monitor warned that “the life of the al-Shifa hospital director is in critical danger” if the Israeli military rearrests or extrajudicially kills Abu Salmiya.

Israel’s domestic intelligence apparatus, the Shin Bet, said that Abu Salmiya met “all criteria regarding the perceived level of danger compared to other prisoners” but said that his release “will undergo investigation.”

The release of such a high-profile individual would likely not have occurred without the approval of the Shin Bet, an indication that it had found no pretext to continue detaining him.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, appeared to blame Abu Salmiya’s release in part on a high court ruling ordering the transfer detainees from Sde Teiman, a desert prison camp where thousands of Palestinians have been disappeared and subjected to ill-treatment and torture since 7 October.

The Israel Prison Service denied that Abu Salmiya was released due to overcrowding in detention centers and published footage of the cell in which the hospital director was held at Nafha prison. The agency added that it does not determine which prisoners are released.

Abu Salmiya said that he had been held in multiple facilities during his seven months of detention.

Ben-Gvir’s mission

On Tuesday, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister and a kingmaker in Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, stated that one of his top goals since assuming that role was to worsen conditions for Palestinian prisoners and accused the Shin Bet of undermining his agenda by warning that this would lead to an explosion with regional implications.

Ben-Gvir added that after 7 October, he was able to “finally carry out” his mission through a number of measures including reducing prisoners’ access to showers and food. He said that his proposal to carry out the death penalty against “terrorists” would resolve the issue of overcrowding in detention centers.

Palestinians who have been detained in recent months have described the systematic use of torture including rape in Israeli detention.

Mahajneh spoke with Muhammad Arab, a journalist detained at Sde Teiman who was “nearly unrecognizable after 100 days” in the facility and was “covered with dirt and pigeon droppings,” according to +972 Magazine.

The journalist testified that “detainees are continually blindfolded and tied up with their hands behind their backs, forced to sleep hunched over on the floor without any bedding.”

Prisoners are in poor health due to a lack of food and access to hygiene facilities. Arab told Mahajneh that he witnessed Israeli guards sexually assault “six prisoners with a stick in front of the other detainees after they had violated prison orders.”

The New York Times and the UN have reported instances of rape and other severe abuses at Sde Teiman.

Israel is currently holding nearly 10,000 Palestinians, including around 3,400 held without charge or trial under administrative detention orders and 1,400 held as “unlawful combatants.”

“These figures do not include Palestinians from Gaza who have been detained by the Israeli military since 7 October 2023 and their number remains unknown,” according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet, reportedly said in a recent letter to Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials that detention centers meant to hold 14,000 prisoners were currently holding 21,000 people.

The contents of Bar’s letter was reported by Israel’s Channel 12 news. He reportedly warned that the situation in the prisons “is a danger for the future of the country’s security,” as it would pose a liability for Israel in international courts.

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• Khan Younis
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• al-Shifa Hospital
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• Sde Teiman
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• Muhammad Arab

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