An Israeli human rights organization revealed on Monday that the army is preventing the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, Hussam Abu Safiya, from meeting his lawyer, and is refusing to reveal his location 11 days after his arrest.

"The Israeli military is refusing to allow Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, to meet with his lawyer to assess his condition and the conditions of his detention," the Israeli human rights organization Physicians for Human Rights said in a post on the X platform.

"Despite our urgent requests to send a lawyer, the army says he is banned from visiting the lawyer until January 10, 2025," the organization added.

She continued: "The Israeli army also continues to withhold information about the place of detention of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyeh, despite its retraction of its previous claim that he is not being held in Israel."

The human rights organization considered that "medical workers are protected under international humanitarian law."

“There is a reason for that, which is that if you attack medical workers, you are attacking an entire community, you are attacking civilians who need medical care, people who have chronic diseases, people who have injuries,” she said.

Noting that "there are more than twenty thousand people waiting for urgent medical evacuation" from Gaza, the organization said: "The reason is that there is no functioning health care system in Gaza, and hundreds of medical workers have lost their ability to care for their people."

She added: "More than a thousand medical workers were killed, 230 others were arrested, and 130 of them are still being held in Israeli prisons... More than 70 people have already died in Israeli prisons."

The rights organization continued: "For comparison, nine people died in Guantanamo during 22 years of work. Here we have more than 70 people in just a few months."

On December 28, 2024, the Ministry of Health in Gaza announced that the Israeli army had arrested Abu Safiya in the North Gaza Governorate.

A day before, the Israeli army stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, set it on fire, put it out of service, and arrested more than 350 people who were inside, including its director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyeh, whose photo at the time, in his medical gown, being led away by soldiers in handcuffs amidst the destruction, sparked a wave of Arab and international condemnation.

As the Israeli genocide intensified, Abu Safiya paid a heavy personal price when he lost his son Ibrahim in the Israeli army's storming of the hospital on October 26.

On November 24, Abu Safiya was injured in a bombing that targeted the hospital, but he refused to leave his place and continued to treat patients and the wounded.