Head of Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital released after months of detention

On Monday, Abu Salmiya was one of about 50 Palestinian prisoners released back into the Gaza Strip; as he and other detainees reunited with family and recounted details of their detention, officials in Israel traded blame for the hospital director’s release.

Abu Salmiya’s whereabouts have been unknown to the public since his arrest. In a news conference upon his return to Gaza, he said abuse was common in detention, and that no lawyer had been granted access to the facility he was in.

“I was subjected to torture almost daily,” he said.

Abu Salmiya was held under Israel’s far-reaching Unlawful Combatants Law, a form of administrative detention that allows Gazans to be held for extended periods without charge and without being classified as prisoners of war. The 2002 law permits a Palestinian to be jailed for up to 45 days without a detention order, up to 75 days without seeing a judge and up to six months without legal counsel.

A judge probably reviewed Abu Salmiya’s arrest warrant multiple times during his detention, though the exact legal proceedings he went through and the evidence presented against him remains under seal, said Tal Steiner, the director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel.

“We really have to ask ourselves whether this man was so dangerous, and the evidence against him so compelling, and how did that change,” she said. “We have to highly scrutinize and be very skeptical about the security allegations that the military or the ISA makes towards people from Gaza,” she said, using the acronym for Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service.

Another doctor released Monday, Issam Abu Ajwa, said he had faced 17 days of “brutal” torture after he was detained during a raid on al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City in late December. He spoke to The Post by phone and shared photographs that appeared to show significant weight loss.

“They poured cold water on us, they turned on the air conditioners and air fans, forced us to stand on our tiptoes and tied us by our hands to the ceiling,” he said. “They would untie us every six hours for 10 minutes.”

The Israel Defense Forces said Abu Salmiya was not in their custody and did not immediately respond to questions about Abu Ajwa.

In response to Post questions about the doctors’ detention and their allegations of torture, the Israeli prison service said: “We are not aware of the claims you described. Nonetheless, prisoners and detainees have the right to file a complaint that will be fully examined and addressed by official authorities.”

Two other doctors from Gaza — Adnan al-Bursh, a prominent surgeon, and Iyad al-Rantisi, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia — have died in Israeli custody.

Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the IDF chief of staff, said last month the military was looking into allegations of mistreatment and general conditions at the three main detention sites.

Israel has denied the International Red Cross access to Palestinian detainees since the conflict began on Oct. 7, when Hamas militants killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel and took more than 250 hostages back to Gaza.

In addition to Gazans, Israeli authorities have detained more than 9,460 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem since Oct. 7, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club, a figure that includes those still in prison and those who have been released.

The IDF’s November operation around al-Shifa, which still housed hundreds of sick and dying patients, caused the hospital’s operations to collapse.

As Israeli troops closed in and fighting intensified, fuel ran out, supplies could not enter and ambulances were unable to collect casualties from the streets. In the weeks before the raid, the IDF claimed that five hospital buildings were directly involved in Hamas activities and sat atop underground tunnels used by militants to direct rocket attacks and command fighters.

Troops found weaponry inside the complex, as well as a tunnel network on hospital grounds. But a Post analysis of open-source visuals, satellite imagery and publicly released IDF materials found that none of the five hospital buildings identified by an IDF spokesman appeared to be connected to the tunnel network, and there was no evidence that the tunnels could be accessed from inside hospital wards.

In March, Israeli forces returned to al-Shifa, battling Hamas militants it said had regrouped inside the complex and in surrounding neighborhoods. Two weeks of heavy fighting left the hospital in ruins.

Abu Salmiya’s release Monday sparked anger among Israeli officials. Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said the decision amounted to “security neglect,” while Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi called for “new security leadership.”

Former war cabinet minister Benny Gantz, who resigned last month over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the conflict in Gaza, said “whoever made this decision lacks judgment and should be fired today.”

Netanyahu’s office said the decision was made independently by security agencies and that an “immediate investigation” had been ordered.

In a statement, the ISA blamed the release on overcrowding in Israel’s detention system, saying it had forced the release of prisoners who pose a “lesser threat.” But the country’s prison service disputed that: “The director of the hospital was not released due to a shortage of detention space,” it said, claiming that Abu Salmiya had been released from Nafha Prison, in central Israel.

“Any claim regarding a failure in the release process undermines the professionalism and integrity of the prison officers who deal daily with the worst of murderers,” the prison service said in a statement.

In early June, Israeli authorities said they had moved hundreds of detainees from Sde Teiman, a military-run detention site for Gazans in southern Israel, to other prisons. An unknown number of detainees remain at the facility, which Israeli authorities said would continue to operate as a temporary holding site for detainees.

The decision came amid growing international outrage and domestic legal pressure. Palestinian prisoners and Israeli whistleblowers have alleged that Israeli soldiers and medical staff at Sde Teiman committed grave human rights abuses.

Former detainees told The Post and other media that they were forced to kneel nearly all day on their knees with their eyes covered and hands shackled. They said they received very little food, water and medical care and were subject to indiscriminate beatings and other violence. Last month Khaled Mahajna, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, was the first lawyer allowed inside Sde Teiman. He told Al-Araby TV that detainees said they had been raped and tortured.

The Post — whose requests to visit Sde Teiman and other detention sites for Gazans have been denied by Israeli authorities — could not independently verify the claims.

Steiner said that Abu Salmiya’s release was “very closely linked to the judicial pressure that we have finally started to see towards the military apparatus regarding detainees from Gaza.”

“The root of the problem is the legal framework that allows people to be held unchecked for so long,” she added.

Heidi Levine and Lior Soroka contributed to this report.