A new investigation by British journalist and activist Andy Worthington has drawn renewed attention to dozens of Palestinian doctors and healthcare workers from Gaza who remain imprisoned in Israel , including Kamal Adwan Hospital director Hussam Abu Safiya.
The nearly 10,000-word report, published on his website on Wednesday , says 75 doctors and medical workers from Gaza are still being held in Israeli prisons, most of them for between 500 and 900 days without charge or trial, in what Worthington described as "deeply inhumane conditions involving torture, starvation and medical neglect".
The investigation relies on data gathered by Healthcare Workers Watch, a Palestinian-led project documenting attacks on healthcare facilities and workers across Palestine.
The group says its work seeks to "bridge the gap in reporting and documentation caused by the collapse of the Palestinian healthcare system" by using open-source monitoring, testimonies from relatives and colleagues, and cross-checks with Palestinian health authorities, hospitals, professional associations, and local media.
Worthington said he began researching the issue after regularly joining calls for the release of Dr Abu Safiya , whose hospital in Beit Lahia became one of the most prominent symbols of the siege on northern Gaza.
The report describes Abu Safiya as having kept Kamal Adwan Hospital operational for three months, from October to December 2024, while it was besieged and repeatedly attacked by Israeli forces during what Worthington called the "genocide within a genocide" in northern Gaza.
During that period, Abu Safiya survived the death of his son and was wounded himself before surrendering on 27 December 2024, when it was no longer possible to keep the hospital running.
According to the report, he was detained under Israel's 2002 "Unlawful Combatants Law" and is currently being held in Ketziot prison in the Naqab desert.
Worthington said Abu Safiya is being held "under harsh conditions", citing his lawyer, who has not been allowed to visit him for more than two months. He is reportedly being denied needed medication and medical care despite a deterioration in his health.
His detention was extended again on 28 April without charge or trial.
Healthcare Workers Watch previously documented around 95 detained doctors and healthcare workers, including 80 from Gaza and 15 from the occupied West Bank, most of whom were reportedly abducted by Israeli forces from hospitals or ambulances while on duty.
According to the organisation's latest update on 17 April, 1,571 doctors and healthcare workers have been killed since 7 October 2023, while 446 have been unlawfully detained. The group said six healthcare workers had been killed in Israeli custody and five others remain missing.
Worthington said Healthcare Workers Watch had confirmed that 75 doctors and medical staff from Gaza remain detained, alongside eight from the West Bank, while noting that the real number could be higher because the families of 29 detained healthcare workers had not yet provided status updates.
The report also revisits attacks on Gaza's hospitals since the beginning of the war.
It cites Doctors Without Borders (MSF) as reporting on 7 October 2023 that Israeli forces struck the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza and an ambulance outside Nasser Hospital in the south, killing a nurse and an ambulance driver, injuring several others and damaging an oxygen station.
Worthington's investigation also references attacks on Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia and the bombing of the courtyard of Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on 17 October 2023, which killed hundreds of displaced Palestinians sheltering there, according to Gaza authorities.
The report says Israel "claimed, without any evidence", that the Al-Ahli strike was caused by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, while Worthington wrote that later forensic investigations pointed to "the trajectory of a missile from Israel".
In a broader analysis, Worthington reorganised detainee data according to arrest dates rather than professions, saying this "establishes more clearly the patterns of detention" linked to Israel's attacks on Gaza's hospitals.
The report identifies major phases of detention connected to Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in February 2024, Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in March 2024, and Kamal Adwan Hospital in October and December 2024.
Worthington argued that the pattern showed the detention of medical staff was closely tied to Israel's wider "war" on Gaza's healthcare sector, which he said intensified in "depraved defiance of recognised and internationally agreed prohibitions on attacking hospitals, doctors and other medical staff".
He also said the intensity of attacks had only declined because of what he described as Israel's "success at destroying almost the whole of Gaza's healthcare sector ".
The report points readers to a February 2025 report by Physicians for Human Rights Israel, titled "Unlawfully Detained, Tortured, and Saved: The Plight of Gaza's Medical Workers in Israeli Custody".
According to PHRI, medical personnel were primarily questioned about Israeli captives, tunnels, hospital structures and Hamas activity, and were "rarely asked questions linking them to any criminal activity" or presented with substantive charges.
Worthington called for more information on detained healthcare workers and said he intended to continue updating the list as an ongoing project.