Israel’s release of the director of Gaza’s largest hospital after more than seven months of captivity has raised a political storm that serves to explain the internal differences within the government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. After being arrested on November 23, Mohamed Abu Salmiya, director of the Al Shifa hospital and one of the best known of the thousands of people detained in the Strip during the current war, was returned to the Palestinian enclave on Monday along with about fifty other prisoners.
Salmiya reported being mistreated during her detention, including being deprived of food and medicine, and said that some detainees had died while in captivity at the hands of the Israeli authorities. “They subjected me to severe torture, breaking my little finger and hitting me on the head until I bled more than once,” she told reporters after arriving in southern Gaza, in a testimony that echoes that of other Gazans who have also been detained in recent months.
“Israel arrested me as if they had caught a big fish. Now it turns out that it was all a lie and a fantasy and they had inflated the whole thing. Here I am, free, without charges. They took me before the judge several times and did not even present evidence,” Salmiya added.
Netanyahu and several ministers have criticized this release and the prime minister has called for the opening of an investigation while different institutions ignore the decision to return the prisoner to Gaza. “The decision to release the prisoners comes after the sessions of the High Court on a petition against the detention of prisoners in the Sde Teiman detention center,” details a statement from the prime minister’s office.
The military base near the southern city of Beer Sheva, where the director of Al Shifa Hospital has been held, has been repeatedly accused of being a place of torture where dozens of Palestinians have died during the conflict, according to humanitarian organisations and some of the released prisoners. Up to 36 prisoners have died in Sde Teiman, according to a report by the daily Haaretz.
Knowing what happens outside is understanding what will happen inside, don’t miss anything.
KEEP READING
Overcrowding
The decision to release him has been based on the recommendations of the Shin Bet (internal security service) and the military intelligence services after a reevaluation of the information available about Salmiya, according to that same newspaper. The Shin Bet issued a statement warning the Ministry of National Security against releasing prisoners due to prison overcrowding. The Israeli Prison Service noted for its part that “the decision to release the director of Al Shifa was made by the army and the Shin Bet, not by the prison service,” the same media reports. The statement added that the hospital director was not discharged due to overcrowding in the prison. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant takes aim at the Shin Bet and the Prison Service.
According to screenshots of the WhatsApp group of government ministers obtained by Haaretz, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, responsible for the prison service, said that “it is time to send the head of the Shin Bet home. He does whatever he wants, and Gallant fully supports him. “They both don’t give a damn about the cabinet and the Government.” The opposition Yair Lapid has even spoken on the social network X of “anarchy and dysfunctionality of the Government.”
In addition to killing nearly 38,000 people, Israel has detained thousands of citizens in Gaza since the war began in operations it considers to be fighting Palestinian terrorism. Many are released weeks or months later without charge and after having been tortured, as they have reported in interviews or in testimony to institutions such as the UN.
More than thirty prisoners have died in the detention centre at the Sde Teiman military base alone, according to data published by the newspaper Haaretz. Among those who have died in the hands of the Israeli authorities is the head of Traumatology at Shifa Hospital, Adnan Al Bursh, who was arrested on November 20 and died in an Israeli prison on April 19. Salmiya remembered him this Monday after being released.
Israel insisted on numerous occasions that Hamas had its central command in the basements of that hospital, located in Gaza City and assaulted by Israeli troops several times since last October, but it never proved it (although it did find some tunnels). ). The fundamentalist group has always denied that it uses health facilities as bases.
Follow all the international information at Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.
.
.
_