Gaza hospital director facing ‘serious deterioration’ in health in Israeli custody: Rights group
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
An Israeli human rights organization on Thursday warned of a “serious deterioration” in the health of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, who has been in Israeli custody since Dec. 27, 2024, Anadolu reports.
Physicians for Human Rights said one of its lawyers recently visited Abu Safiya at Ofer Prison, west of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, and documented the conditions of his detention.
According to the group, Abu Safiya has lost nearly 25 kilograms, suffers from scabies without receiving proper treatment, and faces a severe decline in his overall health. He has not appeared before a judge since March, has not been interrogated, and remains unaware of the charges against him.
The organization said the doctor is subjected to violence, ill-treatment and denial of medical checkups despite a history of heart disease and high blood pressure. His detention conditions reportedly include food shortages, lack of clean clothing, and repeated assaults by prison guards.
The group noted that more than 100 medical workers from Gaza have been detained since Israel’s war on the enclave began in October 2023, most without formal charges, calling the practice “a blatant violation of international law.”
Naji Abbas, who heads the group’s prisoners’ department, urged Israel to release Abu Safiya and other detained health workers immediately, calling their detention a “moral and legal crime.” He appealed to the international community to intervene.
READ: Israel threatens to stop Gaza-bound aid flotilla despite global appeals
In February, Israeli media aired video footage showing Abu Safiya in custody, shackled hand and foot and appearing visibly exhausted. Days earlier, Israeli authorities had placed him under “unlawful combatant” status, amid reports of torture, abuse and medical neglect.
At the end of March, an Israeli court extended his detention for six months, according to a statement by the Hamas-run Office for Prisoners’ Affairs.
Abu Safiya has also suffered personal losses during the war. His son Ibrahim was killed when Israeli forces raided Kamal Adwan Hospital on Oct. 26, 2024. A month later, he himself was injured in an Israeli strike on the hospital but refused to leave and continued treating patients.
He was eventually taken into custody on Dec. 27, 2024, when Israeli troops stormed the facility, forced him out at gunpoint and destroyed the hospital, leaving it out of service.
The Israeli army has killed more than 65,500 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since October 2023. The relentless bombardment has rendered the enclave uninhabitable and led to starvation and the spread of diseases.
READ: Over 2,500 Palestinians killed while seeking food aid in Gaza: Israeli rights group
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Bolivian president accuses US and Israel of ‘practicing genocide’
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Bolivian President Luis Arce addressed the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, launching a harsh critique of the US. He accused Washington of causing pain and death globally and said that a “genocide is currently being practiced by the decision of two countries,” referring to Israel and the US, in Gaza, Anadolu reports.
“Today, the echoes of war drums are sounding,” Arce said, specifically targeting Washington. He argued that Donald Trump and other powerful sectors in the US have an “obsessive desire” to cause pain and death around the world.
The Bolivian president asserted that the “threat of death stalks Latin America and the Caribbean.” He said the US Southern Command has mobilized in the region with “war potential,” including missiles, planes, helicopters, and submarines.
According to Arce, the US argues it is in the region to “fight drug trafficking and organized crime,” but claimed that, “if it were true, it would begin to confront both of these issues in its own country.” He said that the deployment is actually a pretext to promote the “militarization of a region” and to carry out an “intervention in Venezuela … which possesses extremely important natural resources, especially oil, which the North intends to control.”
READ: UN commission of inquiry accuses Israeli president, prime minister of inciting genocide in Gaza
He said the US military operations seek to “attempt to regain control of Latin America and the Caribbean, based on undermining democracy, promoting militarization, and employing other colonialist tactics.”
Arce said that the world continues to bear the consequences of wars, blockades, and unilaterally imposed sanctions, which he believes contradict the UN’s founding principles.
He cited the economic blockade against Cuba as a prime example, referring to the millions in losses caused by the six-decade-long unilateral action by the US government. Arce said the blockade stemmed from “imperialism’s rejection of the region’s first socialist revolution.”
“The threat of death also runs through the Middle East,” Arce said, referring to the violence in the Gaza Strip, with the participation of Israel and the US, “which want to accelerate the displacement of the Palestinian people in the shortest possible time.”
READ: US pressure delays UEFA suspension of Israel over Gaza war
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Over 2,500 Palestinians killed while seeking food aid in Gaza: Israeli rights group
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Israeli human rights group B’Tselem on Thursday affirmed that Israeli forces have killed more than 2,500 Palestinians in recent months while they tried to access food aid in northern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands remain trapped amid acute famine, Anadolu reports.
The group released a video from the Zikim Crossing, the only entry point through which aid could reach northern Gaza until its closure on Sept. 12. According to B’Tselem, civilians walked for hours in desperate search of food, only to be met with Israeli gunfire.
Witnesses described chaotic scenes of crowds rushing toward aid trucks under fire, with many killed and wounded while rescue teams were unable to reach them.
Among the victims was Ahmad Abu Rukbah. His brother Talal told B’Tselem that after hours of waiting near Zikim, they finally managed to obtain a sack of flour. On their way back, heavy gunfire broke out again, striking Ahmad in the chest. Talal said he tried to stop the bleeding with his shirt, but Ahmad died instantly.
B’Tselem said that since May, more than 2,500 Palestinians have been killed and over 18,500 injured while trying to reach aid convoys. The rights group accused Israel of weaponizing famine as part of its ongoing genocide in Gaza.
In July, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, citing the systematic destruction of Palestinian society and the deliberate dismantling of the enclave’s health care system.
The Israeli army has killed more than 65,500 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since October 2023. The relentless bombardment has rendered the enclave uninhabitable and led to starvation and the spread of diseases.
READ: UN, EU condemn use of force against Gaza-bound aid flotilla
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Labour party conference faces ‘challenging optics’ of mass arrests – as Labour officials shut down genocide debate
- Over 100 people are expected to challenge the ban on Palestine Action and the party’s complicity in genocide outside Labour’s conference
- Mass arrests of peaceful protesters will be acutely embarrassing for the government on first day of conference
- Labour officials rejected all 30 motions on Palestine
- 70% of Labour members oppose the ban and TUC has voted to reverse it
Over 100 ordinary citizens are expected to risk arrest under terrorism laws outside the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool at 2:30pm this Sunday by peacefully holding signs saying “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
The ban on Palestine Action is hugely unpopular with Labour members with 71% saying they oppose the ban. Trades Unions also oppose the ban. At their annual conference earlier this month the Trades Union Congress voted unanimously to reverse the ban.
When Jack Straw brought in the Terrorism Act 2000 he assured the House of Commons that it would never be used against a protest group.
Many Labour Lords and MPs feel they have been misled and have called on ministers to rethink the “unsustainable and unworkable” “authoritarian attack of the right to protest”. The New York Times has published the intelligence services assessment on Palestine Action which undermines the government’s claims that the group poses a danger to the public. Lawyers have accused former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper of conducting “a cynical media campaign.”
Despite the evident hunger to discuss the genocide in Gaza, the Labour government’s complicity and their ban on a domestic nonviolent protest group, party officials have ruled out all 30 motions on Palestine submitted by local branches.
A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said:
“Labour members and trades unions are against their party’s complicity in genocide and the ban on Palestine Action. Yet party officials have shut down all the debates that members wanted to have on these issues during their conference.
“Defend Our Juries will bring the “Lift The Ban” campaign to the door of the party that continues to deny genocide and has banned the direct action group that was trying to prevent it.
“The action will pose a dilemma for the Merseyside Police: prioritise human rights and community relations like Police Scotland and other forces around the UK, or trample over fundamental rights to protest and free expression like the Met Police by arresting over 100 peaceful sign-holders under this ridiculous ban.
Labour has reneged on Jack Straw’s promise that the Terrorism Act he introduced would never be used against a domestic protest group. Unless the law is redrawn and the ban overturned, any group that this government or a future government does not like could be treated as terrorists. This ban cannot and will not stand.
“The government has misled the public and MPs about why Palestine Action was proscribed. Instead of shutting down protest, it’s time the Labour Party took the responsibility to prevent genocide seriously and impose blanket sanctions on Israel including stopping the flow of arms from factories in this country.”
Labour government’s genocide denial
Last week the UN Commission of Inquiry found that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Yet the Labour government continues to say that “any formal determination as to whether genocide has occurred should be made following a judgment by a competent national or international court.”
The UN report rejects this position noting that “Since at least January 2024, when the International Court of Justice ordered its first provisional measures, all states… have been on notice of a serious risk that genocide was being or would be committed.”
The UK government has therefore been negligent of its obligations under the Geneva Convention to prevent and punish genocide.
Keir Starmer says he will “jealously and fiercely” protect free speech
Despite recent mass arrests of over 1,600 people for peacefully holding cardboard signs, and scenes of an 83 year old Anglican priest being led into a police van, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in his recent press conference with US president Donald Trump, said: “free speech, it’s one of the founding values of the United Kingdom and we protect it jealously and fiercely and always will.”
ructing his genocide for Israel.