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A prominent doctor who had become a voice for besieged Palestinians in Gaza and was detained by Israeli forces in December has had his detention without charge extended, his family and legal representatives said Thursday.

The family and supporters of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the head of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, had hoped he would be released under a ceasefire deal, along with dozens of medical workers who had been detained during Israel’s offensive in the Palestinian enclave.

According to an X post by Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, a legal group based in Gaza, an Israeli court “rubberstamped” the extension of Abu Safiya’s detention for another six months in a closed-door hearing.

In a separate statement on Abu Safiya’s own account, his family also said his administrative detention had been extended. Israel has not commented on the case.

“There has been one shock after another, and the size of the pain is indescribable,” Abu Safiya’s son Elias Abu Safiya told NBC News over WhatsApp on Thursday. “I don’t know how I can sleep while my father is worried, how I can eat while my father is hungry, and how I can live my normal life.”

Abu Safiya’s family and supporters had hoped and expected he would be among the around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees Israel agreed to exchange for 48 hostages held by Hamas on Monday as part of a ceasefire deal.

The Israeli military initially denied Abu Safiya was in its custody, but in a statement in January, it said without providing evidence he had been involved in “terrorist activities” and held “a rank” in Hamas that made Kamal Adwan Hospital a stronghold during the war.

Abu Safiya’s son and colleagues, including the Chicago-based nonprofit MedGlobal, which has partnered with local care workers in Gaza for years and arranges volunteer medical missions to the enclave, have rejected these allegations. Abu Safiya was the lead physician in Gaza for MedGlobal before his detention.

Prior to his detention in December 2024, Abu Safiya had warned that Israeli strikes were putting patients, medics and sheltering civilians at risk, calling for the world to intervene to “protect the health care system.” He refused to leave the side of his patients, even as tanks and bulldozers encircled his hospital.

Abu Safiya was last seen in Gaza in December walking from Kamal Adwan Hospital toward Israeli tanks. Video verified by NBC News showed Abu Safiya, a lone figure in a white doctor’s coat, moving through a rubble-strewn street surrounded by bombed-out buildings. The footage was believed to capture the moments before he was detained by Israeli soldiers.

After detention orders in Abu Safiya’s case were previously upheld by an Israeli court in March, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights maintained his innocence, saying in a news release that he was “solely performing medical and administration duties at Kamal Adwan Hospital.”

Al Mezan says Abu Safiya reported enduring torture and inhumane living conditions to a lawyer who was previously able to visit him at Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank.

A spokesperson for the Israeli Prison Service told NBC News it does not provide details regarding the “identity, conditions, or legal status of prisoners and detainees.”

The Israel Defense Forces has responded to those allegations by saying it acts in accordance with both the country’s and international law and “protects the rights of individuals held in detention facilities under its responsibility.”

Asked for comment on the case, the Israeli military referred NBC News to the Israeli Ministry of Justice. In a statement, the ministry said it was not responsible for determining the identity of those who are released.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Healthcare Workers Watch, an initiative that documents detentions from Gaza, had said in a news release that 55 medical workers, including 24 nurses and seven doctors, were on lists of detainees from Gaza expected to be freed. It could not immediately confirm whether all were.

At least 115 medical workers remained in Israeli custody, as well as the remains of four who died while in Israeli custody, it said in the news release on Monday.

More than 9,000 Palestinians remain in Israeli prisons, according to data published by HaMoked, an Israeli human rights organization.

Many of them are being held under “administrative detention,” according to the organization — a practice in which Israeli authorities hold people without trial or other usual legal proceedings, often based on alleged secret evidence they often do not share with detainees, their families or legal representatives. Their fates are among the questions not addressed in President Donald Trump’s plan.

“We cannot rest easy nor look ahead to the colossal task of rebuilding Gaza’s shattered health system until he and all of our health colleagues are safely home,” Joseph Belliveau, MedGlobal’s executive director, said in a statement shared with NBC News on Monday.