Hundreds of Gaza Doctors Disappeared Into Israeli Detention

It’s been two months since Osaid Alser has heard from his cousin, Khaled Al Serr, a surgeon at Nasser Hospital within the southern Gaza Strip metropolis of Khan Younis.

Earlier than late March, they’d been in common contact — or as common because the shredded communication infrastructure would permit. Al Serr had created a telemedicine WhatsApp group the place he and Osaid, a surgical resident within the U.S., recruited docs from stateside, the U.Okay., and Europe to present recommendation to their overstretched colleagues in Gaza.

“He reported on a gunshot damage in a 70-year outdated,” Osaid stated, of Al Serr. “It was in her head. And actually, there have been no neurosurgeons at the moment.”

“He was sharing these circumstances, and he was asking for assist,” Osaid went on. “It was like, ‘Is there any neurosurgeon that may assist me? How can I repair this?’”

Al Serr was a pure vessel for the collective medical data of the group chat. “He at all times wished to assist out, at all times favored to make use of his fingers, to sort of repair an issue and have a right away influence,” in line with Osaid.

In February, the Israeli army invaded Nasser Hospital. The assault left the hospital hollowed out, simply one of many destroyed well being care facilities in a medical system savaged by an amazing caseload and a relentless army assault by Israel.

Nonetheless, Al Serr maintained some optimism. His final submit on Instagram was uploaded in mid-March, a brief video exhibiting the outside of the hospital from the day earlier than, captioned with a triumphant message:

Lastly!! After greater than a month of slicing electrical energy in Naser hospital, our workers was in a position to repair the generator and get the electrical energy once more to Nasser Hospital. For the final two weeks, we try to wash and put together the hospital’s departments to reopen the hospital once more.

Six days later, on March 24, Israeli forces stormed the hospital once more. Osaid had requested just a few days earlier if Al Serr was alright. No response ever got here. It was their final change.

His relations consider that Khaled Al Serr, together with what was left of the hospital’s dwindling workers, was taken prisoner by Israel.

As early as November, studies emerged of docs being detained and going lacking in north Gaza. In keeping with the World Well being Group, no less than 214 medical workers from Gaza have been detained by the Israeli army. In early Could, the detention and alleged torture of medical workers from Gaza made headlines when Israeli authorities introduced the loss of life of Adnan Al-Bursh, a well known surgeon and the top of orthopedics at Al-Shifa Hospital. After being taken into custody in December, officers stated Al-Bursh died in April whereas in Ofer Jail, an Israeli detention facility within the occupied West Financial institution.

“Dr. Adnan’s case raises severe issues that he died following torture by the hands of Israeli authorities. His loss of life calls for an impartial worldwide investigation,” Tlaleng Mofokeng, the United Nations particular rapporteur on the correct to well being, stated in a press release final week. “The killing and detention of healthcare employees shouldn’t be a reliable technique of warfare. They’ve a reliable and important position to take care of sick and wounded individuals throughout occasions of battle.”

Al-Bursh is one in every of no less than 493 Palestinian medical employees who’ve been killed in Gaza since October 7, in line with the Ministry of Well being. The Israel Protection Forces has systematically focused hospitals from the north to the south of the strip, claiming that Hamas operates within the services. Medical workers in Gaza’s hospitals have repeatedly denied this declare. This week, Israeli forces have launched new assaults on Kamal Adwan Hospital and Al-Awda Hospital within the north, with studies on Wednesday and Thursday of medical workers being detained from Al Awda.

As floor troops made their manner into southern Gaza by the tip of the yr, assaults on hospitals within the southern metropolis of Khan Younis ramped up. In February, when the Israeli army was laying siege to Nasser Hospital, Al Serr was the one basic surgeon there.

“He’s a really devoted physician,” Ahmed Moghrabi, a plastic surgeon who beforehand labored at Nasser Hospital, stated of Al Serr.

Each docs continuously posted to social media concerning the horrific circumstances that have been flooding into Nasser Hospital, particularly as assaults on the power elevated and worldwide media protection was scarce.

“I noticed kids, ladies in torn items,” Moghrabi instructed The Intercept, explaining why he started posting on social media. “I wished to point out the world what’s going on on the bottom.”

The final time he noticed Al Serr was in February. “They” — the Israeli army — “surrounded the hospital and we have been trapped,” Moghrabi recalled. “And the hospital got here underneath siege for 3 weeks. We couldn’t actually transfer from one constructing to a different. We couldn’t take a look by the home windows. In any other case the snipers might shoot us.”

Moghrabi left the hospital in mid-February, in the course of the first invasion. “We evacuated at midnight that day,” he stated. “The IDF established a checkpoint not removed from the hospital gate. They checked everyone really. My nurse, they took him on the checkpoint. He was detained for 2 months.”

As for Al Serr, Osaid stated his cousin left shortly after the February evacuation to go to Rafah and verify on his mother and father, however that he returned to Nasser Hospital to assist reopen it and deal with sufferers.

For the reason that assault on the hospital in late March, there’s been hardly any information about Al Serr. The one crumbs of knowledge have been extra alarming than reassuring. The primary is that Al Serr was final seen signed into his WhatsApp in mid-April. “He was final lively on-line on April 12,” Osaid stated, “which, to me, tells me that they confiscated his telephone and so they principally accessed his telephone as nicely.”

Then, just a few days afterward April 17, the information outlet Al Mayadeen launched an interview with a Palestinian who recognized himself as Ahmed Abu Aqel and stated he had been detained and launched by Israel. Moghrabi instructed The Intercept that Abu Aqel was beforehand a nurse at Nasser Hospital.

Clothed in a grey sweatshirt and sweatpants, a typical outfit for launched Palestinian detainees, Abu Aqel stated he had a message from the docs of Nasser Hospital who have been being held in detention.

“They’re subjected to each day beatings and killing and torture,” Abu Aqel stated. “There’s a message particularly from the physician, Dr. Nahed Abu Ta’imah, director of surgical procedure on the Nasser Medical Advanced. His state of affairs may be very tough and he’s struggling underneath very tough, tragic circumstances. He wants therapy and must be seen by the Purple Cross and launched urgently.”

“A colleague of mine was being held subsequent to me,” Abu Aqel stated. “His identify was Khaled. They plucked his complete beard with pliers in entrance of me. His beard was plucked. That is one in every of a whole lot I do know.”

Osaid believes he’s referring to Khaled Al Serr.

Whereas Abu Aqel didn’t say the place he was held — the place Al Serr should still be — Osaid thinks it was doubtless Sde Teiman, a army base and detention middle in Israel’s Negev Desert. There have been quite a few allegations of abuse, torture, and detainees dying at Sde Teiman. (The Israeli army didn’t reply to a request for remark.)

Other than Abu Aqel’s obscure testimony and the one blip on WhatsApp, there was no info or updates on Al Serr’s whereabouts or situation.

“It’s simply heartbreaking to know nothing about your family members,” Osaid stated. “We don’t know if he’s alive or not. We don’t know if he’s OK or not.”

Those Palestinians fortunate sufficient to be launched from imprisonment supply harrowing glimpses of what occurs inside Israeli detention facilities.

In December, Khaled Hamouda, one other surgeon, was working in Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. A month earlier, he had been displaced from the Indonesian Hospital, the place he usually practiced. At Kamal Adwan, Hamouda was additionally a affected person, receiving therapy for accidents he sustained in an airstrike on his household house in Beit Lahia. His spouse, daughter, father, and a brother, amongst different relations, have been killed within the assault.

It was about 10 days after the strike that Israeli forces ordered each medical workers and civilians sheltering at Kamal Adwan Hospital to depart. Hamouda stated the hospital administration was instructed that folks would have the ability to go away and go to a special hospital with out being arrested.

That was not what occurred. Hamouda and a few of his colleagues have been as an alternative taken into custody by the Israeli army.

“Once they attacked the hospital, they requested all the boys and youth older than 15 years outdated and youthful than 55 to carry their ID and to get out from the hospital,” Hamouda stated. Their eyes have been lined, their fingers certain, and so they have been taken to a different location, although Hamouda shouldn’t be certain the place.

Quickly after they have been taken, pictures started to unfold on social media of dozens of detainees being held by Israeli troopers in north Gaza. In a single picture, a bunch of males stand shirtless within the foreground as a soldier seems to take their picture. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than folks have been in a position to determine one of many males as Hamouda.

“That is on the day they took us from Kamal Adwan hospital and so they requested us to take a look at the digicam,” Hamouda stated. “It’s the one proof that I used to be taken on this present day. No person knew what occurred to us till this picture went to the media.”

Hamouda stated he was ultimately taken to Sde Teiman, the place he and different detainees have been compelled to stay on their knees. In the event that they didn’t, they have been punished. “They ask him to face along with his hand above his head for about three or 4 hours,” he stated of 1 prisoner.

“Sadly, after they knew that I’m a health care provider and basic surgeon, they handled me extra badly.”

“Sadly, after they knew that I’m a health care provider and basic surgeon, they handled me extra badly,” he recalled. “They attacked me, and so they beat me in my again and my head.” Hamouda stated the troopers wished to know if he knew about Israelis held captive in Gaza, however he didn’t know something.

Whereas he was detained, he additionally noticed somebody he knew from the medical group: Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh. “They introduced Dr. Adnan in at about 2 or 3 a.m.. He was horribly handled. He was in ache,” Hamouda stated. “He instructed me, ‘Khaled, they beat me. They attacked me violently.’” In keeping with Hamouda, Al-Bursh additionally stated he had a fractured rib. Hamouda was in a position to procure medication and a few meals for Al-Bursh however, two days later, the injured physician was taken away.

Regardless of his situation and the cruel circumstances of jail, Al-Bursh introduced information for Hamouda. “Your mom is current in Al-Awda Hospital, and he or she is ok, I handled her,” Hamouda recalled Al-Bursh telling him. Hamouda was grateful for the message: “This info was very, very valuable for me as a result of I didn’t know any details about my household, particularly my mom. So I hugged him and kissed his head and thanked him as a result of it’s the one hope that after I get out, I’ll discover her.”

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After three weeks, Hamouda was launched. He instructed The Intercept he and different detainees have been pushed to the Kerem Shalom border crossing within the south and ultimately went to Rafah. His surviving kids and his mom have been nonetheless within the north, and it could be two months earlier than they have been in a position to reunite. He considers himself lucky as a result of he was launched.

“All my colleagues, docs who have been arrested with me or after me or earlier than me, they saved them there for about three or 4 or 5 months,” he stated. “Some are nonetheless being held.”

Even earlier than the struggle, docs have been essential in Gaza, particularly amid the ebbs and flows of Israeli border restrictions and army assaults.

“Each two to 3 years,” Hamouda stated, “we change into trapped in some struggle or some assault from the Israeli Military. So our work is vital for individuals who current there.”

Hamouda’s father had additionally been a health care provider and wished his son to observe in his footsteps. “He suggested me to be a health care provider,” Hamouda stated, “as a result of it’s a profit to folks.”

Fulfilling the need of caring for folks, Hamouda believes, is why well being care employees have change into such widespread targets on this struggle. “It’s not a coincidence,” he stated “They imply to assault the homes of the individuals who can deal with the wounded folks and that may change one thing within the situation within the north.”

The feelings have been shared by Osaid, who stated his cousin Al Serr would have agreed: They turned docs to assist folks. “With the quantity of killing that has been occurring for some time, we’re at all times in want for surgeons to repair traumatic accidents that folks maintain,” Osaid stated. “And so to me, [it] was a pure response rising up in Gaza, the will of serving to out and therapeutic injured folks.”

Al Serr’s posts on Instagram principally present how he documented the flood of horrific circumstances that arrived in entrance of him: a gradual stream of civilians torn aside by shrapnel and bullets, punctuated by repeated and escalating assaults on Nasser Hospital. Considered one of his final posts, nevertheless, supplied a glimmer of hope: two infants born on the day the hospital was invaded in February.

For his subsequent submit, Al Serr ventured exterior the hospital, a reminder of how the struggle has left nobody in Gaza untouched. It was a brief video of his neighborhood, properties, and buildings turned to piles of rubble, with the trail to his own residence buried beneath all of it.

“He at all times wished to type a household,” Osaid stated of his cousin, “have youngsters, construct a life and reside in peace.”

With no phrase from Al Serr for 2 months, that chapter of his life seems like an ever extra distant chance.

“He was very courageous. He was doing his job. Just about our job as a surgeon isn’t just to heal the injuries and to repair wounds, but additionally to advocate for our sufferers. So he was advocating for them.”

“I actually hope that he’s OK.”