While Some Were Released In The Ceasefire, Israel Still Holds 80 Palestinian Medical Workers Without Charge. Their Families Are Demanding Their Freedom.
When Dr. Ahmad Al-Farra turned his phone camera around in his office at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, placards reading “Freedom to Dr. Abu Teima” and “We will not leave you” appeared. They were held by Nahed Abu Teima’s wife and children, who have not spoken to him in nearly two years.
Abu Teima was the director of the surgical ward at Nasser Hospital until Israeli forces detained him during a February 2024 raid on the medical complex. His family was addressed after asking Al-Farra, the head of the hospital’s pediatric and maternity ward, what he knew about the seven colleagues taken in that same raid.
Their names appear on a list published by Physicians for Human Rights–Israel (PHRI), identifying 17 Gazan doctors — and 80 medical workers overall — who remain in Israeli custody even after Israel’s release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees at the start of the ceasefire.
Held without charge or trial in dire conditions, these doctors are denied contact with the outside world, save for infrequent lawyer visits. They face physical violence, medical neglect, and starvation, as a result of which dozens of detainees have died. Yet even when their cases draw significant public attention — like that of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, detained since December 2024 — it has done little to bring about their release.
A few months ago, there was a social media campaign in which Israeli doctors read the testimonies of detained Gazan physicians. They read out the following words: “We need antibiotics and medicines for infections … Sometimes I perform surgeries on prisoners, clean the abscess, open it with a piece of plastic, and disinfect with some chlorine.” It was only after speaking with Abu Teima’s family that it was learned the testimony was his.
Since his detention, Abu Teima has been permitted to see his lawyer only once every six months. After their most recent meeting in early October, the lawyer informed the family that he has lost 25 kilograms, is beaten daily, is told he will never be released, and is being denied his regular blood pressure medication.
At the time of his arrest, Abu Teima had been living with his wife, Arwa, and their nine children inside Nasser Hospital, alongside many other families of medical staff. Israel had destroyed their home in Khan Younis early in the war, and they believed the hospital would offer some protection from the airstrikes.
When the Israeli army raided the medical complex, Abu Teima’s family evacuated but he insisted on staying behind to care for the patients who remained. It was the last time his family saw or spoke to him.
Only in August 2024, with the help of PHRI, did they receive confirmation that he was being held at Ketziot Prison in southern Israel. Their first indirect contact, through a lawyer, came three months later — nearly nine months after his arrest.
Since then, Arwa and the children have been living in a tent in Khan Younis. A practicing gynecologist, she has managed to support the family alone, but it has not been easy: Doctors in Gaza have received no steady salaries since the start of the war, only sporadic lump-sum payments every two to three months
One of her younger sons, Yousef, smiled brightly throughout the conversation despite suffering from heat stroke and an infectious abscess in his leg. When the family came to the hospital to protest for Abu Teima’s release, Al-Farra administered IV fluids and antibiotics; without their connection to the hospital, Yousef’s treatment would have been far harder to secure.
“We lose one child in the hospital every day because of a lack of equipment,” Al-Farra told +972. Medications for diabetes, hypertension, and hypothyroidism are scarce. The hospital has run out of test tubes for blood work, and its intensive care units operate without essential infusion equipment.
Although more food has entered Gaza since the ceasefire, Al-Farra explained, staples like meat, milk, eggs, and fresh produce remain largely unavailable. And despite a surge in patients arriving from shuttered hospitals in the north, Nasser has received no additional medical supplies.
Hidden History -- In The Making 