Many of Gaza’s medical workers have been detained or killed

Dr. Khaled El Serr last spoke to his family in mid-March, a week before Israeli troops raided the hospital in the Gaza Strip where he worked as a surgeon.

“No one has seen or heard of him ever again,” said his cousin, Osaid Al Serr, a surgical resident in the United States. “We do not even know whether he is dead or alive.”

El Serr was arrested by the Israeli military, according to Amnesty International, citing the accounts of co-workers and Palestinian detainees who have been released. But the military has refused to say whether it is holding him.

His story is not unique. More than 300 of Gaza’s health workers are in Israeli detention, the enclave’s health ministry says, while others have been detained for a time and then released. And according to the World Health Organization, 500 have been killed in the war, out of a prewar total of about 20,000.

Based on estimates of the war’s toll, that means medical workers have been killed and detained at higher rates than Gaza residents generally, a severe blow to a health care system whose facilities have been devastated by war, and a population weakened by hunger, lack of clean water and the rampant spread of diseases.

“That equates to an average of two health care workers killed every day, with one in every 40 health care workers, or 2.5% of Gaza’s health care workforce, now dead,” Medical Aid for Palestinians, a British charity, said in a statement.

Asked about the detentions, the Israeli military said in a written response that “it does not deliberately detain doctors” but that “suspects of terrorist activities are detained” and taken for detention and questioning in Israel. Those found not to have been involved in “terrorist activity” are released back to the Gaza Strip, the military said.

Some of the doctors who have been released have said they were tortured in Israeli jails, which the Israeli military has denied. Others have died in custody, according to rights groups.

The director of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Dr. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, was taken into custody seven months ago, after Israeli forces first raided the hospital — the largest in Gaza — saying that Hamas fighters were using it for military purposes and had tunnels underneath it. No charges were brought against him.

Released on July 1, Abu Salmiya said at a news conference that he and others had been subjected to “extreme torture” His finger had been broken, he said, and he had been beaten over the head repeatedly. His release set off a round of finger-pointing among Israeli authorities over who had authorized his detention, but there was no additional clarity on the cause or conditions of his time being held.

One of the doctors who died in Israeli custody was Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, 50, the head of orthopedics at Shifa Hospital. He died in April at Ofer Prison in the West Bank, prompting a wave of criticism from the United Nations and rights groups.

“Dr. Adnan’s case raises serious concerns that he died following torture at the hands of Israeli authorities — his death demands an independent international investigation,” Tlaleng Mofokeng, a U.N. special rapporteur on health care rights, said in a U.N. news release. The statement said that the doctor had “reportedly been beaten in prison, with his body showing signs of torture,” but gave no other details.

Israel’s prison service confirmed his death but declined to say anything about how he died.

Dr. Iyad Rantisi, a 53-year-old gynecologist who worked at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, also died in custody, in Shikma Prison on Nov. 11, six days after he was arrested, the Israeli news outlet Haaretz reported in June.

Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, which Haaretz reported ran the interrogation facility at Shikma, said Rantisi had been arrested on suspicion of being involved in holding Israeli hostages. “The circumstances leading to his death are being checked by the relevant authorities,” the security agency said in a statement on June 19.

Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, many hospitals in Gaza have come under attack from the Israeli military, which has accused Hamas fighters of using them as bases. Hamas and Palestinian doctors have repeatedly denied that claim.

The U.N. Human Rights Office said it had gathered “credible information” that Israeli military raids on hospitals had often led “to mass detention and enforced disappearances, including of medical staff.” The “systematic attacks on hospitals” and the killing, detention and enforced disappearance of health workers had a devastating impact on the people,” the U.N. body said in a statement on June 25.

Only a dozen of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functioning at all, according to Gaza’s health officials, with the others crippled in raids or rendered dysfunctional because of shortages of fuel and medical supplies. The detention of health care workers has further weakened Gaza’s fragile health care system as it tries to treat thousands wounded in Israeli airstrikes.

Dr. Ahmed Al Moghrabi, who worked as a plastic surgeon at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis before fleeing to Egypt, said the fate of many of his colleagues, including El Serr, remains unknown.

He recounted the “utter chaos” he witnessed when Israeli forces laid siege to Nasser Hospital in February. He said that he saw snipers atop buildings surrounding the hospital, and that one of his nurses was shot in the chest. He said he left the building through a checkpoint that Israeli troops had set up yards away from the hospital.

“I was lucky that they did not detain me,” he said.

El Serr had returned to Nasser Hospital after the February raid because he was the only general surgeon at the facility, Moghrabi said. “He was a young and committed doctor who often took to social media to post about what was going on in Gaza,” Moghrabi said.

With no news about El Serr since March, Amnesty International began a campaign in June urging Israeli authorities to release him. The rights group has demanded that Israel disclose the whereabouts and legal status of all Palestinian health care workers who have been taken into custody and release then unless they have been charged with a crime and given due process.

El Serr’s parents, who are in Rafah, are desperate to have information about their son, Osaid Al Serr said. “We are trying everything possible,” he said. “He was a doctor who went above and beyond to do his duty and did not deserve this fate.”

Osaid Al Serr said his cousin’s resilience was apparent during their regular communication on a WhatsApp group that El Serr had set up early during the war to seek help from doctors abroad. “He would post about complicated cases and discuss medical approaches he could take,” he said. “These are doctors Gaza needs badly. They should not be in jails.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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