Beatings, diseases, humiliation: A Palestinian doctor’s year in Israeli jails
Dr. Abu Shahada after his release from Israeli detention, January 2025
Ruwaida Kamal Amer reports in +972 on 18 February 2025:
Amid the haze of the Israeli army’s manifold raids on medical facilities in the Gaza Strip over the past year and a half, it is easy to lose sight of their human impact. The story of Dr. Mahmoud Abu Shahada, the chief of orthopedics at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, helps to reveal their arbitrary brutality and cruelty.
Abu Shahada was one of 70 medical staff arrested along with dozens of patients on Feb. 17, 2024, during Israel’s invasion of the hospital. The arrests were the culmination of a nearly month-long siege on Gaza’s second largest medical facility, where troops fired on the hospital and its courtyard, demolished of the complex’s northern wall, targeted its water tanks, and cut off electricity.
Abu Shahada had not taken any part in the fighting, his lawyer says, but Israel detained him for nearly a year, subjecting him to persistent abuse and forcing him to live in harsh conditions. Following an appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court, Abu Shahada was finally released on Jan. 10. He spoke to +972 shortly after, in an interview that has been edited for length and clarity.
Please introduce yourself.
My name is Mahmoud Abu Shahada and I’m 42 years old. I work at Nasser Medical Complex as a consultant and have headed the orthopedic department since 2017. I have worked in the Healthy Ministry since 2009.
Like all the people of Gaza, I have lived through many wars, and I treated patients whom Israeli forces had wounded during the Great March of Return protests. But nothing was as intense, brutal, and barbaric as this war, with so much displacement and destruction.
Tell us about your life before the war, and how it changed after October 7.
Before October 7, we lived a quiet life. From the morning until 2 p.m. I would be at the hospital working. Then, I would spend some time with my family. From late afternoon until evening I would work in my private clinic, except for Thursdays, which was my day off. That day was for my children and my wife and it was always busy; we would go out and have dinner outside the house. It was a beautiful day that we always looked forward to. We would release the negative energy and pressures of work and life.