SFor days, the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza had been increasingly surrounded – by soldiers and by threats. The army announced that a Hamas command center was hidden under the largest clinic in the Gaza Strip. Since the end of October, she has repeatedly presented images and recordings that are supposed to prove that the terrorist group is using the hospital as a cover for military activities. President Itzhak Herzog spoke on the BBC on Sunday of a “huge, huge terrorist base”, the “headquarters” of Hamas, which is located under the hospital.
Since the end of last week, troops have been operating in the immediate vicinity of the complex, which is located to the west of Gaza city. The hospital management received calls to evacuate the hospital via one of the corridors to the south that the army has set up. She rejected this, arguing that many patients were not fit to be transported. What should Israel do, Herzog asked rhetorically in the BBC interview: Leave everything as it is so that the same situation repeats itself in a few years? Rather, the president said, “we are calling on all bystanders to go to another hospital nearby, and we are coordinating that very carefully with all forces in the area.” However, Hamas is preventing this.
Most recently, the army warned that Hamas’ continued military use of Al-Shifa Hospital “endangers its protected status under international law.” An ultimatum was announced on Tuesday that all military activities within the hospital must cease within twelve hours. However, this did not happen. Troops then entered the hospital for the first time on Wednesday night. According to their own statements, the soldiers discovered bombs before entering the hospital, and a battle with Hamas fighters also developed. Several of them were therefore killed. It was initially unclear whether the militia members had come from one of the hospital buildings or from outside.
Weapons and “terror infrastructure”
The military operation was still ongoing on Wednesday afternoon. A senior army representative said in a briefing to journalists that weapons and “terrorist infrastructure” had already been discovered, but without going into detail. Another goal may have been to search for possible traces of people who were abducted into the Gaza Strip on October 7th. The army recently discovered such suspected traces in a basement below another hospital.
The army representative also reiterated what the military had already said that night: that this was a “precise and targeted operation” against Hamas, based on intelligence and only taking place “in a specific part” of the hospital. In general, the military is trying to emphasize these days that it is doing everything possible to ensure that civilians are not harmed. This may also be due to increased international criticism of the consequences of the military operation for civilians. It was said that night that the Israeli units operating in Al-Shifa Hospital also included “medical teams” and people who spoke Arabic. They had “undertaken special training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment so that no harm would come to the civilians used by Hamas as human shields.”
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