Abu Safiya: after almost two years, the EU asks Israel to ensure a fair trial, but without making waves

Brussels – “The EU has been following closely the case, and it has been raised with the Israeli authorities and called on Israel to ensure full respect for fair trial guarantees and prisoners’ rights.” Full stop. The European Union’s response is all here, in the almost stammering words of the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the EU, Kaja Kallas, regarding the case of Hussam Abu Safiya, a Palestinian paediatrician and former director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, who has been arbitrarily detained by the Israeli authorities since 27 December 2024, without charge. 

The story is one of those that should trigger reactions and pressure. Abu Safiya is not a Hamas fighter; he went to the Israeli military to ask them not to bomb the hospital, as operations and medical procedures involving children were taking place. He went in peace and for the sake of peace. Yet, he was arrested and never released. The episode, in itself, says a lot about the deterioration of the rule of law in Israel — a country considered a democracy to which the EU, by Kallas’s own admission, has asked to be a democracy: a request that, on its own, shows how democracy in the Jewish state is effectively suspended.

In addition to the “abduction” of the Palestinian doctor, there is also the matter of his conditions of detention. According to his lawyer, Amnesty International and also according to the United Nations, Abu Safiya is said to have been subjected to prolonged solitary confinement, torture, ill-treatment and denial of medical care. These are certainly not conditions typical of a democratic system.

 https://www.eunews.it/en/2026/03/03/israel-orders-demolition-of-sports-field-in-west-bank-refugee-camp-eu-says-it-will-monitor-developments/

 In the European Union that is strong with the weak and weak with the strong, the Abu Safiya case clashes with the Navalny case: on the one hand, indifference and leniency; on the other, outrage and restrictive measures adopted in the blink of an eye, first against the judges who imprisoned him and then against Russia, proving that, contrary to what Kallas has said on other occasions, the EU does apply double standards. 

As proof of this, the “buts” used by Kallas when addressing the Israeli‑Palestinian issue are never used when speaking about Russia. “The EU acknowledges Israel’s legitimate security concerns and its right to investigate credible allegations of involvement with terrorist organisations,” states the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, who then nevertheless dares to add that “such investigations should be conducted in full compliance with Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law and international human rights law, including with regard to the treatment of detainees and due process guarantees.”

 In short, in the case of the paediatrician Hussam Abu Safiya, the EU has issued a token expression of outrage, but only because it was prodded by 18 MEPs from five different political groups who drafted a parliamentary question to which the Commission had to respond. Yet, after almost two years of arbitrary detention, the EU has merely called for, at the very least, a trial – whilst taking care not to upset Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu’s government too much.