Latest news with #AlMezanCenterforHumanRights
Saba Yemen
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Saba Yemen
Zionist Enemy Confirms Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya's Detention as illegal Combatant
Gaza - Saba: The Palestinian Prisoners' Media Office reported on Tuesday, that the Beersheba Court of the Zionist enemy authorities decided to confirm the detention order of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, as an illegal combatant for a period of six months. This decision comes after the commander of the southern region in the enemy army, Major General Yaron Finkelman, issued, on February 12, 2025, an order to transfer Dr. Abu Safiya to detention under the "illegal combatant" law, instead of trying him through the normal legal procedures. It is noteworthy that the enemy forces arrested Dr. Abu Safiya on December 28, 2024, during their storming of Kamal Adwan Hospital, where more than 350 people who were inside the hospital at the time were arrested. According to Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the transfer of Dr. Abu Safiya to detention under the "illegal combatant" law is an arbitrary , dangerous measure, and proves the failure of the public prosecution to prove its allegations and accusations against the detainee. The illegal Combatant Law allows enemy authorities to detain individuals without specific charges or a fair trial, in violation of international human rights laws and norms. Whatsapp Telegram Email Print
Al Jazeera
03-03-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Netanyahu's plan to deprive and rule in Gaza will fail again
From October 2023 to January 2025, Benjamin Netanyahu managed to displace about 1.9 million Palestinians – almost all of the population of Gaza. He must be proud. The Israeli prime minister can now go down in the Guinness Book of Records as the man who single-handedly displaced the most people within the smallest territory. I, myself, am one of these 1.9 million. I was displaced twice: the first time at the beginning of the genocidal war and then again a year later. Many Palestinian families were displaced repeatedly, some 10 times or more. It was a clear strategy by Netanyahu to divide us. The north was cut off from the south. 'Northerners' were forcibly expelled to the south. Then 'southerners' and the other displaced were forced to move to the centre. But this was not enough for him. The Israeli prime minister authorised a large-scale campaign to wipe out housing across the Gaza Strip, especially in the north and south. He also ordered the blocking of humanitarian aid to starve us. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 92 percent of homes in the Gaza Strip, or about 436,000 structures, were destroyed or damaged as a result of the Israeli aggression. According to Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the Israeli army has not stopped demolishing homes in Rafah throughout the ceasefire. According to the World Food Programme, as of January, more than 2 million people were fully dependent on food assistance, and hundreds of thousands were facing 'catastrophic levels of food insecurity'. Netanyahu has now ordered all humanitarian aid to be cut off again and is planning to forcibly expel Palestinians from the north to the south once again. His aim is clear: to tear apart communities, to separate and weaken us, to turn us against each other through extreme deprivation. But his strategy failed in the past 16 months, and it will fail again. In the face of a genocidal war, the people of Gaza showed immense solidarity with each other. Whoever had a home standing would open it to shelter the displaced, including their families, friends, neighbours and even strangers. Whoever had some food would also share. When we were under siege in our neighbourhood, Sheikh Radwan, in December 2023, we used to throw water bottles through the windows to our neighbour and his daughter to make sure they had something to drink. We also provided food to other people in need by throwing it over the wall separating our home from other homes. During our second displacement, a friend of my father's opened his home for us in the south, and we remained there for four months. On January 15 when the ceasefire was announced, the people of Gaza won against Netanyahu and his strategy of 'divide and rule'. Four days later, some of the displaced from Rafah were able to go back. Then on January 27 came the 'big return'. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians headed back to the north. For the majority of the displaced, 'return' meant discovering homelessness. People walked long distances on foot just to find their houses damaged or destroyed. The word we use to describe wrecked homes in Gaza right now is 'biscuit' – a home smashed flat like a biscuit. The homeless returnees had few options: to go to schools turned into shelters, to pitch a tent in open spaces or next to the rubble of their homes, or to try to repair any standing walls into a living space. Families are suffering in the heavy rain, strong wind and cold. Many, while cleaning, repairing or searching in the rubble to find their belongings, have found the bodies of loved ones and dug them out to bury them. But even in the harsh reality of homelessness, Palestinians still find solidarity. People share what little they have of food, water and even space in overcrowded tents. Neighbours work together to repair broken walls and roofs. Some with half-damaged houses offer shelters to those in need. Volunteers initiate campaigns for distributing food and clothes to schools, shelters and tent camps. Some youth gather daily to cook in communal kitchens, ensuring no one is left hungry. People provide emotional support through WhatsApp groups and mental health meetings. At night, families gather to share stories and comfort each other to reduce the loneliness. The men of our neighbourhood made a schedule to help each other in making shelters in damaged houses. They helped us put up tarps and secure them with poles to the ground and mend walls in our damaged home. We helped others by providing electricity to power the equipment through our barely functioning solar panel. 'Home' is now what most people in Gaza long for. It is supposed to be a warm place of sweet memories you can escape to when the world becomes too much to bear. It is not supposed to be a tent, a school or a destroyed house. But Palestinians have been here before. Three-quarters of the population of Gaza are refugees or descendants of refugees who lost their homes in the Nakba. My own ancestors were expelled from their homes in the town of al-Majdal. What Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders like him seem not to understand is that Gaza is not just a place for us, it is our home. However many times Israel cuts off aid and attacks, destroying homes and displacing people, we will rebuild, not by magic, but by our own solidarity, resilience and the world's support. The unity that has been passed from generation to generation has built a community that refuses to be erased. This is what will help Gaza rise again.
Al Jazeera
12-02-2025
- Health
- Al Jazeera
Gaza hospital chief Abu Safia detained, tortured in Israeli jail: Lawyer
The director of Gaza's Kamal Adwan Hospital has been subjected to various forms of intense torture and inhumane treatment in an Israeli military prison, his lawyer told Al Jazeera. The 51-year-old Hussam Abu Safia was detained by the Israeli army from Gaza in December. He was 'arrested by force, handcuffed and forced to take off his clothes after being taken from the hospital to one of the army camps', said Samir al-Mana'ama, a lawyer with the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights who visited him in Ofer Prison. Al-Mana'ama said that Abu Safia suffers from 'an enlarged heart muscle and from high blood pressure' and was beaten up and refused treatment for the heart condition. He was held in solitary confinement for 25 days at another prison where he was interrogated nonstop by the Israeli army, Israeli intelligence and police, the lawyer added. 'Despite denying all the charges against him, he was beaten with an electric stick by the Israeli army so as to extract a confession from him,' said the lawyer. There was 'no legal justification' for Abu Safia's arrest, the lawyer said, adding that 'any accusation needs evidence and as long as there is no evidence, there is no real complete accusation against Doctor Hussam.' A lack of medical care combined with the appalling conditions in 'very cold prison cells' had 'severely affected' the doctor's health, he said, adding that he was 'facing a lot of sufferings in his confinement and detention'. In a separate statement issued by the lawyer, he said that Abu Safia had been given no access to legal counsel during his 47 days in arbitrary detention. Abu Safia, who had documented the cruel impact of Israel's offensive on Kamal Adwan Hospital, was arrested after refusing multiple military threats to leave the hospital during a devastating blockade on the northern Gaza Strip. The doctor was also reportedly sighted back in December by two released prisoners at the Sde Teiman base in Israel's Negev Desert, a controversial facility known for its extreme abuse of detainees. 'Thousands disappeared' Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman in Jordan, said the doctor was one of hundreds of medical workers taken from Gaza by Israeli forces to the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp and other Israeli military prisons. 'At least his family now knows where he is and that he is alive, unlike potentially thousands of others who the UN said have been forcibly disappeared from Gaza,' she said. The Prisoners' Affairs Committee and the Prisoner's Society issued a report citing the lawyer of a Palestinian detainee who said he had been subjected to severe torture in Israeli detention. According to the report, the prisoner had been beaten by Israeli soldiers while going from north to the south of Gaza, forced to take off his clothes and left for hours in the cold without food or water. Later, tied up and beaten, with both his hands suffering a fracture. Blindfolded and handcuffed, he was eventually transferred to hospital 'because my injuries were clearly visible and swollen', only realising where he was after being discovered by a lawyer.
