WHO’s Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued a stiff rebuke to Israel for its military occupation of Kamal Adwan Hospital – the only hospital left operating in Gaza’s northernmost band of territory – which is now largely depopulated after months of bitter warfare.  

In a post on X, Tedros also called for the release of the Hospital’s director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken into custody by Israel over the weekend of 27-29 December. 

Hospitals in #Gaza have once again become battlegrounds and the health system is under severe threat.

Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern #Gaza is out of service — following the raid, forced patient and staff evacuation and the detention of its director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya two…

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) December 30, 2024

“Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern #Gaza is out of service — following the raid, forced patient and staff evacuation and the detention of its director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya two days ago. His whereabouts are unknown. We call for his immediate release,” Tedros said in a 30 December post. His appeal was repeated again on Saturday, 4 January, as Abu Safiya’s whereabouts remained unknown.   

The WHO director’s calls for the release of the hospital director were echoed by Amnesty International and the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Territories Francesca Albanese, who also called for a worldwide boycott of Israeli medical professionals. 

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) moved into the hospital compound during the last week of December, for the third time in a year. The IDF confirmed it had arrested Abu Safiya as well as some 240 other people suspected of being Hamas fighters, while evacuating patients and health workers deemed to be civilians.   

In his post on 30 December, Tedros said that while critically ill patients had been moved to the Indonesian Hospital, in Beit Lahiya, treatment for critically ill patients was unavailable there, at the severely damaged hospital.  

“Amid ongoing chaos in northern Gaza, @WHO and partners today delivered basic medical and hygiene supplies, food and water to Indonesian Hospital and transferred 10 critical patients to Al-Shifa Hospital. Four patients were detained during the transfer. We urge Israel to ensure their health care needs and rights are upheld,” he said. 

On Saturday 4 January, the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry said that the Indonesian Hospital had been forced to close as well, as Israel drives the remaining civilians out of the northernmost Gaza neighborhoods, which lie adjacent to its border, and where plans are underway to create a “security perimeter”. The hospital was the last functioning facility north of Gaza City.

Israel says it facilitated evacuation of civilians from the hospital

In a sharply different account of the hospital’s occupation, Israel’s military said that it had facilitated the evacuation of dozens of civilian patients and health care staff from the Kamal Adwan hospital premises – displaying video footage of  people lining up at night to leave in ambulances, and conducted “precise activities inside the hospital, locating and confiscating weapons in the area, including grenades, guns, munitions, and military equipment.”  

The arrest of some 240 suspected Hamas operatives included 15 men alleged to have participated in the 7 October 2023 Hamas invasion of Israeli communities near the Gaza enclave, which triggered the 14-month war.   Hospital Director Abu Safiya was arrested because he was “suspected of being a Hamas terrorist operative,” the army said.  Israeli and Palestinian media reported he was being held in Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman facility, although that remains unconfirmed. 

While human rights activists worldwide began to clamour for Abu Safiya’s release in a virtual campaign, Israeli media cited published statements by the Hamas-controlled Gaza government referring to Abu Safiya as a ‘’colonel’. Abu Safiya’s Facebook posts from October 2023, also praised the 7 October Hamas attacks on Gaza-area Israeli communities – although some of the most explicit posts cited by critics were no longer not available online.

Allegations of Hamas use of Gaza health facilities

Throughout the war, Israel has contended Hamas combatants and leaders have regularly used health facilities as bases for combatants and hiding places for Hamas leaders – as well as concealing Israeli hostages, at times, as well. 

WHO has sidestepped the issue, saying it has no means to investigate the veracity of such allegations, while calling periodically on both sides to refrain from militarizing health facilities. No foreign media have been allowed by Israel to enter Gaza since the war began. 

Some former Israeli hostages such as Sharon Aloni Cunio, have spoken in detail about spending extensive time in captivity in Gaza’s Al Nasser Hospital with 30 other captives. 

CCTV footage, confiscated by Israel and later aired by global media, also showed some hostages in the corridors of Al Shifa hospital shortly after their capture – while other freed hostages have related how they underwent procedures at hospitals for injuries sustained during their abduction.  

Forced to undergo procedures without anesthesia

A report to be submitted by Israel this week to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, also describes Israeli hostages being denied treatment for injuries, or forced to undergo painful procedures for acute injuries without anesthesia, as among the various forms of physical and sexual “torture” endured by the 100 captives who were among the more than 240 abducted by Hamas on 7 October, and since released.

But the report, Israel’s first official submission on the subject to the UN, doesn’t explicitly call out a hospital role, per se, in the reports of abuse – which included some women sexually assaulted at gunpoint, and a report of two teens forced to perform sexual acts on each other, as well as men who were beaten and branded.

Independent eyewitness reports have, on rare occasions, confirmed at least some of the Israeli allegations about the use of hospitals by Hamas leaders and combatants. In one such testimony, a Kurdish-born doctor from Denmark, described to Rudaw, a Kurdish TV network based in Iraq how foreign humanitarian volunteers like himself had to turn a blind eye to Hamas activities at hospitals in the northern Gaza where he worked – or risk being labelled as spies. 

“Hamas as a political, military organization needs to exploit all places to maintain it’s survival and strategic position,” said Baram, noting that on one or two occasions, he sat down with an official that he thought was a part of the hospital administration, only to find out later that he was meeting a senior Hamas official.

“It is unfortunate that I have to say, I have seen it with my eyes, that the hsopitals have been used for hiding Hamas leaders.  “It is a reality that exists. There are some realities that you cannot resist…. if you make such attempts you would be labelled as a troublemaker, a spy, or any other thing,” said the orthopedist, who said he was in Gaza on behalf of the Norwegian aid committee, NORWAC, in April and May of 2024. “Our job basically was not even to see them at all.”

WHO says positions anchored in international humanitarian law

Responding to a query from Health Policy Watch,  a WHO spokesman cited a statement from 21 February, 2024 by the agency’s principle legal officer, Steven Solomon, which stated:

“The International Humanitarian Law is very clear. Healthcare workers and healthcare facilities are off limits. They must not be attacked. They must not be used for military purposes. They must be protected at all times. The point is both to protect civilians, as well as to protect the health systems and infrastructure that communities depend on for life-giving care and continuity of services.

“Failure to protect and respect healthcare devastates twice. First, in the initial harm, and then again for the months or years it takes to rebuild the health systems.

“The protection of healthcare also includes the prohibition against combatants using health facilities for military purposes. IHL is also clear that even if healthcare facilities are being used for military purposes, there are stringent conditions which apply to taking action against them, including a duty to warn and to wait after warning and even then, disproportionate attacks are strictly prohibited.” The spokesman added, “WHO consistently calls for hostages to be given access to health care, and to be released.”

Tedros criticises slow pace of Israeli approvals for Palestinian medical evacuations from Gaza

In a separate statement, the WHO Director General also also criticised the slow pace of Israeli permissions facilitating the medical evacuations of wounded Palestinians from Gaza.

Of the 5383 patients evacuated by WHO since the war began, only 436 have been permitted to leave via Israel since Gaza’s southernmost Rafah crossing into Egypt was closed in May 2024, Tedros said, including 55 patients and companions on 31 December.

Over 12,000 people are awaiting medical evacuation, according to the WHO DG, who exclaimed in an X post: “At this rate, it would take 5-10 years to evacuate all these critically ill patients, including thousands of children. In the meantime, their conditions get worse and some die.”

.@WHO has repeatedly raised the alarm that patients in #Gaza need urgent medical evacuation for life-saving treatment, yet the pace of evacuations remains excruciatingly slow.

Only 5383 patients have been evacuated with support from WHO since October 2023, of which only 436… pic.twitter.com/Dqbt35Fg2g

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) January 2, 2025

–Updated 5.1.2024 with news of the Indonesian hospital closing, new WHO statements and the statement by the UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese. 

Image Credits: @DrTedros/X, IDF .