‘Being a doctor is not a crime,’ Elyas Abu Safiya tells Zeteo’s Diana Buttu, as his father’s health behind Israeli bars deteriorates rapidly.
By Dianu Buttu, reposted from Zeteo, July 21, 2026
Elyas Abu Safiya hasn’t seen his father in person in 19 months. The last time he did, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was doing what he had done for most of his life: taking care of other people, saving lives.
On Dec. 27, 2024, the Israeli army abducted Dr. Abu Safiya from the Kamal Adwan Hospital – the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza. His son, Ibrahim, was killed in an Israeli bombing in October 2024.
For a week, Israeli authorities denied that they had abducted him. When they finally admitted they were holding him, Israel didn’t disclose his whereabouts for more than a month. He has since been moved around to different prisons, but Israel has shared little other information. We know he’s being held under Israel’s “Unlawful Combatants” Law – a fictitious legal classification (it does not exist in international law) that Israel uses to indefinitely imprison Palestinians without charge or trial. We know he’s been tortured, and has lost an extreme amount of weight – so weak, he is unable to sit upright. During one of his last visits with his lawyer, he said: “They brought me here to kill me. I don’t see myself surviving. This is the end.”
Elyas, helpless, has had to wait for updates from afar – first from Gaza, and now from Kazakhstan, where his family moved late last year. I recently spoke to him about the campaign to release his father, his message to Donald Trump and new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham, and what his dad taught him about loving Palestine. His answers have been translated from Arabic to English and edited for length and clarity below:
What is the latest information that you have on your father?
ELYAS ABU SAFIYA: We know that he is being tortured. We know that he is being held in an underground prison. We know that he is being held without any charges. I do not understand how this can continue to be the case. I do not understand how people who speak about law and human rights can allow my father to be treated this way. And, it isn’t just my father. Yes, I want my father released, but I also want everyone released and especially the other 14 doctors who are imprisoned with him. My father is the doctor who refused to leave his patients behind even though my brother was killed and the Israeli army kept ordering the evacuation of the hospital, including babies and very sick patients. There is no reason to imprison him and no reason to torture him. Being a doctor is not a crime.
This week, Andy Burnham becomes the UK’s new prime minister. He has apologized for the Labour Party’s position on Gaza, stating, “I know many people feel that at the start of Israel’s military action in Gaza my party didn’t get it right and I am sorry about that. The response has too often not been good enough. We need to do better.” How do you feel and what do you think he should do?
ELYAS ABU SAFIYA: I know that the UK Foreign Office has said that they are ‘deeply disturbed’ with Israel’s treatment of my father. We are asking not just the Foreign Office but everyone to intervene in my father’s case because I fear the worst. I think that my father’s breathing his last breaths. Does it make any sense that a physician – who saves lives – is now being beaten with metal batons?
His lawyer says that he could not recognize him and that it took about 15 minutes before my father could speak because of the torture and abuse. My father has not received medical care throughout his imprisonment and is being tortured. Why is my father being tortured? My father was kidnapped from inside a hospital while treating patients – some of the most vulnerable people.
How is it that he can be abducted and held for more than a year and a half without any charges or without a trial and be subjected to torture? This not only violates international laws, but it violates our basic notions of humanity and morality. It is my understanding that the British were the ones who created this system of ‘administrative detention,’ so they should be the ones who are the most vocal against it.
President Donald Trump declared that there was a “ceasefire” – a term I hate – in Gaza and yet your father remains abducted.
ELYAS ABU SAFIYA: We are asking simply for the right to live. That’s it…the right to live. This is not a huge ask. How is it that kids are not allowed to live? The term ‘ceasefire’ is a misnomer. Palestinian blood has not stopped flowing in Gaza. Not a day goes by where the Israelis are not killing someone. Almost every day there is a new massacre; new deaths, new injured. We just want to see the flow of blood stop. Palestinians are living under catastrophic conditions. There are severe food shortages and shortages of medical supplies. People are living in tents under extreme heat and extreme cold with no future in sight. I feel as though people now view the people of Gaza as deserving of death and not of life. We have been given death sentences.
In one of his interviews, my father asked Trump to intervene, and instead of peace, he sent tanks and bombs.
Your father has become the symbol of both the deliberate destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza as well as Israel’s torture and unlawful imprisonment of Palestinians.
ELYAS ABU SAFIYA: Yes. My father is a hero. He is a role model for all of Palestine for his service, his steadfastness, humanity, and love of Palestine. He always says that Palestine is the most honorable cause, as it is the cause for freedom with its people, particularly in Gaza, sacrificing and enduring the worst, just to be free. All of the doctors need our support because they are all heroes. It is important for us to remember all of them and demand their release.
In response to the campaign to free your father, Israel has now pushed back, claiming that his imprisonment is lawful.
ELYAS ABU SAFIYA: My father has been before several judges in several courts, and each time his file is ‘clean’ [Israel has presented no evidence to the contrary], and yet he continues to be held without any charges. How is this happening? There is no reason to continue to imprison and torture him.
If there was any real evidence against my father, why have they not exposed it to the courts or to others? It’s because they do not have evidence. Instead, they make these claims in order to try to justify his imprisonment and torture. My father [has been] an employee of the Palestinian Authority since 1997, first working in Ramallah before he then moved back to Gaza, where he remained a PA employee working in the health sector.
He has only ever been an employee of the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health. All physicians and all hospitals are under the direction of the Palestinian Authority. My father was working in the hospital, and the hospital was invaded more than five times. Why was it that it took more than a year, and after five different invasions, that my father was suddenly abducted?
My father was a member of MedGlobal, which is a U.S. organization. One of the conditions of his employment was to receive a clean security record from both the Israelis and the Americans – meaning that he cannot be a member of Hamas or any other group. The Israelis cleared him, and they know this.
I know that you are in Kazakhstan now, having arrived just a few months ago with your family. What has that been like?
ELYAS ABU SAFIYA: I have been in Kazakhstan since December with my wife and children. My wife is pregnant with our third child, who, God willing, I will name after my brother who was killed in October 2024. I have mixed feelings about being here. I am part of Gaza and Gaza is part of me. I lived almost all of my life in Gaza.
I love Palestine, and I love Gaza. My father raised us to love Palestine and taught us that Palestine needs us, even during its most difficult days. I weep for Gaza. We lived in a tent for nine months, and the images of burned Palestinians and shredded babies tear me apart. It was difficult living through this. I don’t have the words.
At the same time, now living outside of Gaza makes me feel as though I fled hell. I can now speak freely about my father and about the other prisoners. I can speak freely about Gaza. I was personally targeted twice when I was in Gaza, and the Israeli authorities called me and threatened me not to speak about my father. I was threatened all the time, even though all I was asking for was my father’s release. When I was in Gaza, I was afraid to speak out because I knew that they would kill me as they killed so many others speaking the truth, and in particular the journalists.
It has not been easy for us. My father remains imprisoned, and I don’t know when he will be released. My brother was killed. My other brother is still suffering from his injuries. My kids lived through the genocide and starvation, and this affects them and will continue to affect them. We lost everything – literally everything.
We lost our house, and my brother and the genocide still follow me because now I see my father being tortured and I feel impotent – unable to do anything – not knowing when my father will be released. I think about my brother all the time and wonder whether his grave remains or whether it was erased. My kids see my father’s picture and are always asking, ‘When will we see Seedo (grandfather)?’ My eldest lived with my father in the hospital, and when she asks about him, I keep saying ‘soon,’ but for the most part I try to protect them by not mentioning him in front of them. All of this weighs on me. But for now I focus on securing my father’s release.
Diana Buttu is a Haifa-based lawyer and analyst who was a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in the early 2000s and is a frequent commentator and writer on Palestinian and Israeli issues. She is also a practitioner in residence at Georgetown University in Qatar. She writes Zeteo’s ‘A Diary from a Palestinian in Israel.’
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