Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is a Palestinian doctor and human rights defender who lives in northern Gaza, Palestine. He is a paediatrician and the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital which by November 2024, was one of the last barely functioning hospitals in northern Gaza with only two remaining doctors. Since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the human rights defender has refused to evacuate the hospital as ordered by the Israeli military forces, for fear of abandoning his patients. On 25 October 2024, the Israeli military brutally stormed the hospital, bombed its buildings, detained many patients and all hospital staff, and killed Hussam Abu Safiya’s son as a consequence of the father's refusal to leave the hospital. Hussam Abu Safiya’s son was targetted by a drone while he was sheltering at the hospital with his family.
“The Israeli army does not know what it wants. They detained me for a few hours and interrogated me about whether there were fighters inside the hospital, and demanded that I evacuate the hospital completely, but I refused and assured them that there were only patients inside the hospital. But 57 of the hospital’s medical staff were arrested, (...) So we are suffering from a severe shortage of doctors, especially surgeons. Right now, we only have pediatricians — it is a huge challenge to work under these circumstances. I refused to leave the hospital and sacrifice my patients, so the army punished me by killing my son. I saw him die at the entrance gate — it was a great shock. I found a grave for him near one of the hospital’s walls, so that he could stay close to me.”
Human rights defenders in the OPT are subjected to acts of harassment, restrictions on freedom of movement, stigmatisation, abductions, long periods of arbitrary detention usually under administrative detention orders, illegal searches of their homes and offices and killings. Many of the violations are state-sanctioned, or if not sanctioned at the highest levels of the Israeli political and military establishment, then condoned by the ongoing policy of impunity which permeates the military and judicial system in relation to the OPT. In some instances Israeli settlers have also been the perpetrators of violence against human rights defenders.
