MSF Demands Release of Detained Palestinian Healthcare Workers

Médecins Sans Frontières has called for the immediate release of Palestinian healthcare workers imprisoned by Israel, declaring that prolonged international silence on the matter has hardened into complicity. The organisation issued its statement on Monday, describing itself as “outraged by the treatment of healthcare workers, most of whom are being detained in dire conditions, without justification or cause.”

The case of Dr Hussam Abu Safia sits at the centre of MSF’s demands. The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza has been held in solitary confinement for more than a year and a half and has reportedly been subjected to torture throughout that period. Israel has classified him as an “unlawful combatant” — a designation his lawyer, Nasser Odeh, contests — and continues to hold him without trial.

Before his detention, Abu Safia had been a consistent and prominent voice documenting the systematic dismantlement of Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure under Israeli military operations. His silencing was not incidental. MSF argues his case “follows an appalling pattern of the Israeli authorities detaining and targeting medical staff across Palestine.”

The organisation also demanded the “immediate and unconditional release” of Dr Mohammed Obeid, an orthopaedic surgeon arrested while on duty at Kamal Adwan Hospital. He has now been imprisoned for more than 600 days.

The scale of the detention pattern is documented with growing precision. According to figures compiled by Healthcare Workers Watch as of April, Israeli forces have unlawfully detained 446 Palestinian healthcare workers since October 7, 2023. Six have reportedly died in detention; their bodies remain in Israeli custody.

Physicians for Human Rights Israel reports that more than 50 healthcare workers — among them 15 doctors — are currently held in conditions it describes as inhumane. The group has petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court for their release, a process that has yet to produce results.

International legal bodies have added their weight to the calls. Earlier this month, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention both issued formal demands for Israel to release Abu Safia and all arbitrarily detained medical personnel. The demands carry the authority of established international humanitarian law frameworks, under which the deliberate targeting of medical workers constitutes a serious violation.

MSF’s statement carries a pointed political charge. “For too long, too many world leaders have failed to condemn Israel’s conduct in Palestine,” the organisation said. The framing is deliberate: inaction, sustained over time, becomes a form of endorsement. The organisation further specified that all detained medical personnel must be granted access to adequate medical care and held in dignified conditions pending release — a baseline that current reporting suggests is not being met.

The detention of healthcare workers is not a peripheral feature of the conflict in Gaza. It is, the accumulated evidence suggests, a structural element of it.