He would not leave his patients. It cost him his freedom and his health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Israeli forces arrested Mosab Samaan inside Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis on February 15, 2024. Since then he has been held in an Israeli prison without charge. He is malnourished. He has scabies, skin disease, and infections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He is one of dozens of Palestinian doctors still held in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mosab refused to leave. Others were looking for a way out of the bombing. He stayed with the wounded and the sick as the danger around him grew. For him it was a matter of duty, as a doctor and as a human being. It ended with his arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The doctor of Maghazi<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Mosab Samaan’s success was no accident. From childhood his classmates knew him as the one who worked hardest and stayed furthest ahead. He memorized the Quran in fifth grade and finished top of his class at every stage of school after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He scored 97.9 percent in his final secondary exams, then went to medical school at the Islamic University of Gaza. After graduating with honors, he stayed on as a teaching assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His father, Fakhry Samaan, says his son did not go into medicine for status. He believed it was “a humanitarian mission before it is a profession.” In Maghazi refugee camp, people called him “the Doctor.” The name came from the way he looked after his patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He stayed<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As the war widened, much of Gaza’s health system was destroyed, and hospitals took in the wounded in huge numbers. Doctors worked hour after hour in harsh conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His family begged him to leave the hospital and save his life. He would not go. What he owed his patients held him there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His father says, “He never left his patients for a single day, even in the hardest conditions.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of the patients he treated still visit his father to thank him for what his son did for them at Nasser Medical Complex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The raid<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n On February 15, 2024, Israeli forces stormed Nasser Medical Complex after shelling hit one of its wards. They arrested Mosab and other medical staff while they were treating the injured. They took his grandfather too, a man of 75. For days the family had no word on what had happened to him, until his colleagues brought the news that he had been taken in the raid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finding a lawyer took months. One finally reached Mosab about six months after the arrest and confirmed that he was alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Israel has held him since then without filing a single charge, under what is known as the Unlawful Combatants Law, which permits detention for long periods without trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sick and untreated<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n His family says the lawyer visits have brought back accounts of harsh conditions inside. His health has declined. With no proper medical care, they fear he will only get worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hundreds of health workers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Mosab is one of dozens of health workers arrested since the war on Gaza began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rights groups say Israeli forces have arrested hundreds of health workers since October 2023. Some were taken during raids on hospitals. Others were seized in the middle of their work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Physicians for Human Rights Israel puts the number of Palestinian medical staff still in detention at about 55, including 15 doctors. Most have never been charged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n International rights organizations have documented testimony from detainees. The accounts describe torture, mistreatment, and the denial of medical care. The United Nations and Doctors Without Borders have called for the immediate release of the detained medical teams and for those still held to be treated according to international law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His father’s appeal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The hardest stretch, his father says, was the first days after Mosab disappeared. Then came the day hundreds of Palestinian prisoners walked free in a prisoner exchange deal, and Mosab was not among them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fakhry Samaan is calling on the international community, medical unions, and human rights organizations to press for the release of the detained doctors. Arresting a doctor takes him from his family, he says. It also takes his care from a whole community. Gaza’s health system is collapsing on a scale never seen before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Mosab is not the only one who has been kidnapped. Every doctor torn from his workplace is another loss for a health system struggling to save lives in the middle of the war,” he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" He would not leave his patients. It cost him his freedom and his health. Israeli forces arrested Mosab Samaan inside Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis on February 15, 2024. Since then he has been held in an Israeli prison without charge. He is malnourished. He has scabies, skin disease, and infections. He is one …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[536,534,537,45,41,39,237,535,538,32,27,28],"class_list":["post-1533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reports","tag-dr-mosab-samaan","tag-gaza-doctor","tag-held-without-charge","tag-human-rights-violations","tag-international-conventions","tag-israeli-prisons","tag-khan-younis","tag-mosab-samaan","tag-nasser-medical-complex","tag-october-7","tag-political-prisoners","tag-prison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1535,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions\/1535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}