top News
Israel released the director of Gaza’s largest hospital on Monday after more than seven months in detention, according to Palestinian health officials, sparking immediate condemnation in Israel, although the charges against him were not made public.
Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, was captured in late November during an Israeli raid on the facility, an early focus of Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Human rights groups say his long detention is a sign of Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners, while some Israeli officials on Monday condemned the decision to release him as another example of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mismanagement of the war.
At a press conference after his release, Dr Abu Salmiya said he was visibly weakened and had been released along with around 50 other Palestinian detainees, including other doctors and health ministry staff, to return to Gaza.
“We were subjected to extreme torture,” Dr. Abu Salmiya said, adding that his fingers were broken and he was hit repeatedly on the head. The Israel Prisons Authority, which runs Nafha prison where the doctor was last held, said in a statement that it was not aware of Dr. Abu Salmiya’s claims and that “all prisoners are held in accordance with the law.”
Dr Abu Salmiya told reporters that no charges had been brought against him and that he had been tried three or four times but never indicted.
He was detained while accompanying a UN ambulance convoy evacuating patients from a hospital to southern Gaza, where it was stopped at an Israeli checkpoint, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and the Palestinian Red Crescent.
At the time, the Israeli military said Dr. Abu Salmiya was being questioned “following evidence indicating that Al-Shifa Hospital, under his direct supervision, served as a command and control center for Hamas,” a charge denied by Hamas and hospital officials. An Israeli military spokesman told reporters at the time that Dr. Abu Salmiya had not been charged and that the military was not suggesting he had ties to Hamas.
The attack turned Al-Shifa into a symbol of war, with many Gazans seeing Israel’s targeting of a medical facility as a sign of disregard for Palestinian lives — a view reinforced by the detention of Dr. Abu Salmiya. To Israelis, the hospital was an example of Hamas using civilian infrastructure for military purposes.
The Israeli military has since released some evidence to support its claim that Hamas was operating inside the Shifa compound, including showing reporters fortified tunnels built beneath the compound. A New York Times investigation suggests that Hamas used the compound as a hideout and to store weapons. But the Israeli military has struggled to prove its claim that Hamas maintained a command and control center beneath the compound.
Abu Salmiya’s release has sparked confusion among Israeli ministers and lawmakers who were already at odds over Netanyahu’s handling of the war. Benny Gantz, a former leading member of Netanyahu’s war cabinet who resigned from government last month, called the decision a “moral, ethical and operational error” and accused the prime minister of releasing Abu Salmiya to free up “space and budget” for other Palestinian prisoners.
The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, said in a statement that the Israeli government had not responded to requests to build more detention facilities to allow for the arrest of more “Israeli and Gaza terrorists.” As a result, the Shin Bet and the army have been asked to release a number of “less dangerous” detainees from Gaza to “free up detention spaces,” it said.
Israeli forces withdrew from the area after raiding Al-Shifa in November, but in late March they returned to the hospital after the army said remnants of Hamas’ military wing had regrouped there, sparking two weeks of fighting that killed about 200 Palestinians and arrested hundreds.
The fighting caused extensive damage to many of the hospital’s main buildings, and bodies were strewn inside and outside the hospital, according to a doctor there and a Palestinian Civil Defense spokesman.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said in a statement on Monday that Dr. Abu Salmiya had been released, along with Dr. Isam Abu Ajwa, a surgeon at Al Shifa. The statement called for the release of all other detained medical workers in Gaza who were “arrested and mistreated solely because they were treating the sick and wounded.”
The Health Ministry said on Sunday that at least 310 medical workers have been held by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war, but did not say how many had been released.
Abu Bakr Bashir Contributed from London. Myra Noveck From Jerusalem Gaby Sobelman Originally from Rehovot, Israel.