️ Nadia Almukayed last saw her husband, Dr. Hassan Khalil Almukayed, inside the Gaza hospital he refused to leave. By October 2024, Israel's genocidal war on the Palestinian enclave had closed in on the Almukayed family, including his father and other relatives.
️ As Israeli forces intensified their assault on northern Gaza, the family found itself trapped inside Kamal Adwan Hospital, where Hassan worked as a vascular surgeon. “We could not evacuate northern Gaza quickly,” Nadia told Al Jazeera. “We moved from one place to another in the north until we became trapped inside Kamal Adwan Hospital.”
️ Hassan Almukayed is one of at least 15 Palestinian doctors from Gaza currently in Israeli detention, the most prominent being Kamal Adwan Hospital's director, Hussam Abu Safia. Last week, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory called for an immediate release of Abu Safia, who has been held without charge for more than 18 months.
️ Rights groups and Abu Safia's lawyer say there are credible reports he has faced “continued and severe abuse”, including severe torture, and that his life is in imminent danger. Abu Safia and Almukayed were among the Palestinian doctors who refused to leave dozens of newborn infants they were treating after the Israeli military ordered a forced evacuation of northern Gaza.
️ Nadia Almukayed said her husband kept working as the number of Palestinians, including children, killed and wounded by Israeli forces kept rising. “From the beginning of the war until Hassan was [taken away], he never stopped serving the patients and the wounded.” He came home for only a few hours every week.
️ When Israeli tanks stormed Kamal Adwan in October 2024, soldiers ordered families out and onto the road south on foot. The Israeli army, Nadia said, “promised the doctors they would not be harmed and would not be arrested”. “The occupation [force], of course, was not truthful in its promises.”
️ Nadia bid her husband a teary farewell and walked away with their three children: son Muhammad, 13, and daughters Malak, 11, and Hala, 8. Communication stopped the following night. “At that moment, I knew Hassan had been detained.”
️ Naji Abbas of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI), which handles the cases of nearly all “kidnapped” doctors, dates Hassan Almukayed's arrest to October 25, 2024. He is being held under Israel's Unlawful Combatants Law, which permits indefinite detention without trial, a category Abbas said “doesn't exist in international law”.
️ Hassan Almukayed has now spent nearly 21 months in Israeli detention without charge. He was initially taken to Israel's notorious Sde Teiman detention camp and held there for seven months. Also detained with him was his brother, Mahmoud, a nurse at the hospital. Mahmoud was released in the October 2025 prisoner swap deal, but Hassan was not. In June last year, he was transferred to Ktziot prison.
️ The brothers do not yet know that their father, Khalil Almukayed, is dead. Khalil was also trapped inside Kamal Adwan. According to the family, Israeli soldiers confiscated his medicine and handed him a water bottle that was punctured at the bottom. He was released in “a very bad condition” and died a couple of months later “of sadness and grief over his sons”.
️ Nadia Almukayed admitted: “I have not told him of his father's death, out of fear for him.”
️ Hassan Almukayed was born in 1972 in Jabalia camp. He studied medicine in Romania, practiced in Sweden, and returned to Gaza in 2010 to care for his aging parents. He also ran a free clinic from his home. “If a patient came at midnight or in the morning, knocked on the door and wanted ‘Dr Hassan’, Hassan would wake up and bring him to the clinic,” said Nadia.
️ When Israel's war divided Gaza into two, Hassan Almukayed was one of only two surgeons remaining in the besieged north. After his car was bombed, he started going to the hospital on a donkey cart.
️ Abbas said what happened at Kamal Adwan was part of a “systemic effort” by Israel to target Gaza's hospitals and push the Palestinians out. “Each time the Israeli army raided a health facility, they arrested dozens of the staff.” More than 350 healthcare workers were detained, 55 are still being held.
️ Abbas described the conditions: “All of them are being starved. All of them are facing, if not daily, a weekly physical violence by prison guards.” At Sde Teiman, cell lights never go off. Almukayed has diabetes and high blood pressure, and has been periodically deprived of his medicine.
️ Nadia Almukayed said her husband has lost 40kg (88 pounds). The Israel Prison Service and the Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment.
️ Asked why the doctors remain imprisoned without charge months after a “ceasefire”, Abbas said: “We believe the state of Israel is afraid of the voices of Dr Abu Safia, Dr Hassan Almukayed and other doctors.”
️ Hassan Almukayed's lawyers have only seen him four times since his arrest 18 months ago. The last time was in January, with visits subsequently suspended.
️ Nadia Almukayed and her children live in a tent in al-Mawasi. She works as a mathematics teacher for UNRWA. “I am exhausted from this life I am living,” she said. The hardest part is watching her eldest son, Muhammad, reach adolescence without his father.
️ During the most recent visit, Hassan Almukayed's message to his wife was: “Can you please make a cake for Hala? Her birthday is two days from now.” Every time the lawyer visits, the three children wait with excitement to listen to the audio recording. “They would say: ‘If only Baba was with us, he would have made us a party. If only Baba was with us, he would have taken us to the sea. If only, if only.’”
Source: www.aljazeera.com