Israel said to move Hussam Abu Safiya, Hamas officer and Gaza hospital chief, to solitary confinement

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, an officer in Hamas’s Military Medical Services who is the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza and has been detained by Israel for some 18 months without charge, was transferred in recent days to solitary confinement at Ganot Prison, Physicians for Human Rights Israel says.

The Israel Prison Service has yet to respond to a request for comment, and the reasons why Abu Safiya would have been moved to solitary confinement remain unclear.

Abu Safiya was arrested by Israel during the war in Gaza in December 2024. He is one of the highest-profile Gazan detainees, and human rights groups, including Physicians for Human Rights Israel, have called for his release.

Following his arrest, a decade-old photo surfaced showing him wearing Hamas uniforms alongside senior members of the terror group. Abu Safiya holds the rank of colonel in the terror group’s Military Medical Services, according to the service and Palestinian media reports.

The Military Medical Services is separate from Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, though its members directly participated in Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror onslaught in southern Israel, which sparked the Gaza war.

According to Physicians for Human Rights Israel, Dr. Abu Safiya is one of 14 Palestinian doctors from Gaza currently detained in Israel without having been indicted. In April, the organization filed a petition to the High Court of Justice demanding their release, and proceedings in the case are ongoing.

The information regarding Abu Safiya’s placement in solitary confinement reached the organization during a June 4 visit by lawyers from Physicians for Human Rights Israel to Ketziot Prison.

According to the organization, a group of Palestinian detainees – doctors from Gaza who were arrested during the war – told the lawyers that several days before the visit, security personnel entered the prison wing and removed Abu Safiya from the facility. The organization later said it learned that he had been transferred to solitary confinement in Ganot Prison.

Before his transfer to solitary confinement, his lawyers claimed he had been subjected to “severe physical abuse,” including beatings and electric shocks.