Israel on Monday released the head of Gaza’s biggest hospital who said he was tortured during seven months in detention, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticised the release as a “serious mistake”.
Tensions over the release of Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Hospital, became public at the same time that he was sent back to Gaza along with dozens of other Palestinians detained since the October 7 attacks that triggered the Israel-Hamas war.
The World Health Organization expressed concern after Abu Salmiya was detained along with other hospital staff on 23 November.
The Israeli military has accused Hamas of using Al-Shifa and other hospitals for military operations, although Hamas denies this.
Netanyahu said he had ordered the Shin Bet intelligence agency to investigate the matter and provide results by Tuesday.
“The release of the director of Shifa hospital is a serious mistake and a moral failure. This man, under whose responsibility our kidnappers were killed and held captive, belongs in prison,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
He said the decision was taken “without any knowledge of the political level”.
The agency had earlier said it had decided on the release in coordination with the Israeli military “in order to free up spaces in detention centers.”
It said it “opposes the release of terrorists” who had taken part in attacks on Israeli civilians “so it was decided to release some of the Gaza detainees who pose a lesser threat”.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a hard-right member of Netanyahu’s coalition, previously called the release of Abu Salamiya “along with dozens of other terrorists” a “security abandonment.”
Israeli raids and a week of fighting earlier this year devastated Al-Shifa. Other clinics and medical institutions have also been damaged, prompting condemnation from UN agencies, NGOs and foreign governments.
Abu Salmiya said he and other prisoners were subjected to “severe torture” while in detention in Israeli jails.
According to Abu Salmiya, “Many prisoners died in interrogation centers and were deprived of food and medicine.” His thumb is still broken.
“For two months, no prisoner had to eat more than one roti per day,” he said.
“The detainees were physically and mentally abused.”
The medical chief said no charges were ever filed against him.
Emotional reunion
A medical source said that after returning to Gaza, five detainees were admitted to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah and the others were sent to hospitals in Khan Younis.
An AFP reporter in Deir al-Balah saw some detainees having emotional reunions with their families.
Hamas denied it used hospitals as shields for its operations. In a statement, it called on the United Nations and countries to “stop this massacre” of prisoners in Israeli jails. It called on the International Committee of the Red Cross to “reveal the fate of thousands of Palestinian detainees” in Israel.
Abu Salmiya was not the only top doctor to be detained.
The Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis said the head of its orthopedics unit, Bassam Miqdad, was among those released on Monday.
In May, Palestinian rights groups said a senior surgeon at Al-Shifa died after being detained in an Israeli prison. The Israeli military said it had no information about the death.
The war began with a Hamas attack on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on Israeli data.
Israel’s retaliatory strikes have killed at least 37,900 people, the vast majority of them civilians, according to figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
