Palestinian surgeon Khaled Al Serr was working at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on March 25 when he was arrested and detained during an operation by Israeli troops.
For months, his family was unaware of his whereabouts, until other detained healthcare workers were released and informed Al Serr's loved ones of his whereabouts.
After spending more than six months in Israeli custody, the 32-year-old doctor was released on September 29 from the Ofer military prison in the occupied West Bank without any charges or trial.
“It was like a nightmare,” Al Serr told CBC News of his detention, two days after he was released and returned to Gaza.
While in custody, the doctor alleges, he was tortured, humiliated and denied adequate access to medical care by soldiers and prison guards.
“I was lucky to have [came] return to my family with a complete body… [that] I didn’t lose my feet,” he said. “Some of the prisoners got an infection due to dogs biting their legs – and some of them due to neglect of healthcare.”
He said that when Israeli forces stormed the hospital, staff were trying to clean and reorganize it so they could reopen it to patients. The facility closed in February after a previous attack which devastated much of the upper floor and stripped it of supplies.
145 doctors still in Israeli custody: Gaza Ministry of Health
Al Serr's experience is the same as what hundreds of health professionals in Gaza have gone through. Around 300 Gaza health professionals remain in custody after being arbitrarily detained by Israeli forces while on duty, according to the local Ministry of Health. At least 145 of them are doctors – about seven percent of the estimated 2,110 doctors who remain in Gaza. Raids on health facilities and detention of medical personnel are devastating to an already fragile health system, international human rights organizations say.
Since June, Amnesty International has repeatedly called about Israeli forces to free Al Serr, noting that his fate and whereabouts remained largely unknown to his family until July.
The global rights group says Al Serr was detained along with other medical professionals in the Nasser Hospital raid and has called on the military to reveal the whereabouts of all Palestinian healthcare workers who the group says have been “forcibly disappeared”.
Dr. Khaled Al Serr was released by Israeli forces on September 29 after spending more than six months in Israeli prisons. The 32-year-old surgeon, who works at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, said he was interrogated, humiliated and beaten, only to be suddenly released last week without any charges.
CBC News contacted the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to ask about Al Serr's arrest and the number of health care workers in custody, but said it could not provide any information or confirm any details.
In a statement, he stated in his offensive in Gaza that “suspects of terrorist activities were arrested” and taken to “further detention and interrogation” in Israel.
Palestinians who were not involved in “terrorist activities” are released back to Gaza, the IDF said.
After the February attack, Israel accused Hamas of regularly using medical facilities for military purposes and broadcast images captured by its troops that it said showed tunnels containing weapons beneath some hospitals.
The Israeli military said it arrested several suspects at Nasser Hospital during the operation.
Punishment and humiliation in Israeli custody: Al Serr
During the first five days in custody, Al Serr said. he was questioned about his work inside the hospital, why he lived in the hospital and his whereabouts on October 7, 2023, during the Hamas-led attacks on Israel that left 1,200 people dead.
He said that before being taken to a prison, he was placed in a container with about 100 other prisoners, where he was beaten and left without any medical services. Al Serr said he was not allowed to be treated despite having difficulty breathing and coughing up blood.
He developed a rash, with red, pus-filled bumps covering his arms.
“They let us suffer from any disease,” he said. “This is part of the punishment inside prison.”
He later said he was transferred to Sde Teiman, an Israeli military base in the Negev desert now used as a detention camp, where he said he was forced to sit with his hands cuffed and was not allowed to move, speak or look at anyone. . He says he was blindfolded and handcuffed 24 hours a day and was mocked and insulted by soldiers.
The photo of Ibrahim Salem in Sde Teiman prison in Israel's Negev desert went viral after being leaked to CNN and spreading on social media. Salem says standing on the fence with his arms up, as he was seen doing in the photo, was a form of punishment he suffered during his 52-day detention at the military base-turned-prison.
He said he was there for about 80 days without knowing why he was detained before being taken to Ofer prison, without knowing what day or month it was.
“I suffered many punishments and beatings from the soldiers there, without any charges,” said Al Serr.
“As a doctor, I didn't get special treatment because all the people there, or most of them, were… teachers and… professors, doctors, nurses. Everyone there is treated equally, which is punishment and humiliation on the part of the Israeli soldiers.”
The family didn't know if Al Serr was alive
Meanwhile, for months, his fate and whereabouts were unknown to his family.
His father, Abdul Karim Al Serr, who was in Rafah at the time of his son's arrest, said he initially thought he had lost his son in an air raid. But after family members were unable to find him among the dead, they determined he was missing.
The elder Al Serr was unaware of the operation until a nurse, who had been arrested along with the doctor, told him that his son was in Israeli custody and was alive. After that, the elder Al Serr said, he would ask every person released from Israeli prisons about his son, hoping to gain information about his well-being.
“We were going to check on him. Between sadness, between pain and suffering, the [other detainees] would tell us what they endured in prison,” he said.
When his son was released after six months in custody, Al Serr said he had no idea. He said he was in Khan Younis, outside a makeshift house in the rubble, when his son approached him, but the father did not recognize him.
“I was surprised. I looked at him. Who is it? That’s not Khaled,” he said.
He said his son lost between 50 and 60 pounds in prison and looked “half his size.”
“I didn’t think he would be released, despite being a doctor. Everyone should respect him, appreciate him – enemy or friend,” his father said.
“Respect that he is a doctor. If a Jew [patient] come to him, he would treat you. If a Christian comes to him, he will treat him. If a Muslim comes to him, he will treat him.”
Worker arrests undermine a fragile health system
Amnesty International stated that the detainees, including young Al Serr, were detained without means of communication, “outside the protection of the law, in conditions that amount to forced disappearance” that violate international human rights law.
Amnesty cited Israel's illegal fighters law, which gives the country the power to detain anyone in Gaza who is suspected of being involved in hostilities against it or posing a security threat. He alleged that Israel uses this law to “arbitrarily” detain Palestinian civilians without due process, calling for its repeal and the release of those detained under it.
“Since October 7, 2023, and particularly since the start of ground operations in Gaza in late October, Israeli authorities have used the [law] detaining thousands of Palestinians without charge or trial,” said Amnesty International he wrote on its website in June.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, a total of 595 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank by Israeli forces as of September 20, according to Observation of healthcare professionals.
The arrests of health professionals are further straining Gaza's fragile health system, more than a year after a war that devastated its infrastructure and injured at least 97,590 people and killed more than 42,000 in Israeli bombings, according to Gaza health authorities.
Dr. Ahmed Al-Farra, head of pediatrics at Nasser Hospital, said hospitals in Gaza are in a “catastrophic situation.”
Al-Farra said hospitals lack supplies, equipment and fuel to generate electricity, in addition to the unsanitary conditions and overcrowding they deal with.
Al-Farra said a lack of clean water and the rampant spread of disease are contributing to more and more deaths.
