Multiple IDF sources declined to address reports on Monday that an Israeli undercover force detained Marwan al-Hams, a senior official in the Hamas-run Health Ministry, outside the field hospital of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the southern Gaza Strip.
The Health Ministry said that Hams, in charge of field hospitals in the enclave, was on his way to visit the ICRC hospital in Rafah when an Israeli force “abducted” him after opening fire, killing one person and wounding another civilian nearby.
Medics said the person killed was a local journalist who was filming an interview with Hams when the incident happened.
A spokesman for the ICRC told The Jerusalem Post that some of its personnel had witnessed the arrest and the shootings and had provided medical care to some of those shot afterward.
However, the ICRC did not have more specific information about Hams for before and after the incident.
The IDF has attacked Hamas at a number of hospitals, including killing Hamas commander Mohammed Sinwar, who was hiding at the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, on May 13.
However, undercover arrests of Hamas Health Ministry officials have been more rare, though not unheard of.
One such high-profile arrest occurred at the start of the war, with the Health Ministry official kept in detention from November 2023-July 2024.
In July 2024, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and the IDF released 50 Gaza detainees, including the director of Shifa Hospital, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, who had been in administrative detention in Israel since November 2023.
Hamas using hospitals as terror bases, hostage hideouts
Although Hamas was using Shifa as a terror base and to conceal hostages, there was never any concrete proof publicly produced that Abu Salmiya was directly involved.
In November 2023, a senior IDF source told The Jerusalem Post that Abu Salmiya had given suspicious answers when questioned about what he knew about Hamas’s systematic usage of his hospital, but suspicious answers without evidence cannot usually be used to hold someone in administrative detention for more than seven months.
Abu Salmiya had three hearings before the courts, the last of which was made quasi-public in December 2023.
Sources in December 2023 told the Post that he had a hearing before an unidentified Israeli civilian magistrate’s court via video conference in which his detention was extended. The same process recurred later at some unidentified point in spring 2024.
There was never a specific explanation why an indictment of Abu Samiya could not be produced after several months.
Previously, Abu Salmiya was being criminally probed by the Shin Bet under war emergency regulations relating to Hamas and other terrorists connected to the war.
As part of those regulations, Abu Salmiya had been prevented from meeting with a lawyer, at least for a number of weeks after he was first detained.
Though sources did not identify the civilian court, traditionally, the Beersheba courts have handled a variety of Gazan terror cases.
Reuters contributed to this report.