One hour. This is the time that the Israeli army gave yesterday to the Al-Shifa staff to evacuate the reference health center in Gaza. After 72 hours of total siege and the assault on the complex in search of Hamas tunnels, the military issued their ultimatum through loudspeakers, according to medical sources informed the AFP agency. The director of the Strip’s hospitals, Mohammed Zaqout, confirmed that soldiers forced the complex to be emptied “at gunpoint” and that 450 patients had to leave, leaving behind about 120 who were unable to walk, including dozens of newly born. Those 120 are waiting for a miraculous evacuation by the UN or the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which did not occur during the day.
What doctors and journalists described as “forced evacuation,” Tel Aviv called a response to the Al-Shifa director’s request to allow those sheltering in its facilities and wishing to leave through “a safe axis.” The uniformed officers also indicated that they delivered 2,300 kilograms of food and 6,000 liters of water in a semi-deserted area.
Asked about the situation by the Al-Jazeera channel, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa, confirmed the evacuation and said that he had been accompanied by a small group of doctors and nurses to care for the critical cases “who will die immediately if they cannot be evacuated.
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Israel achieves an objective it has been pursuing for days, as it locates the Hamas headquarters in the basement of the hospital. The complex and the entire nearby neighborhood will soon become a huge excavation area with the aim of finding those supposed tunnels in which the Islamists take refuge, according to the Jewish and American Intelligence services.
Exhumations
For now, the only thing the army has shown is the supposed entrance to a tunnel, covered in rubble, and some weapons that they claim belonged to Hamas. The soldiers would also have taken more than a hundred bodies from the mass grave dug at the gates of the center, according to Ismael al-Thawabta, from the Gaza government’s communications office.
The Foreign Minister in Ramallah issued a statement regarding this evacuation in which he noted that “Israel’s actions represent another appalling facet of the crimes of ethnic cleansing and genocide” against the Palestinians.
In Gaza City there are hardly any journalists left to tell what is happening. Added to this is the telecommunications blackout in recent days, partially solved after the arrival of fuel for the Paltel company. The UN also reported the arrival of the first two trucks with gasoline announced by Israel the day before so that it can resume its work of distributing aid.
The evacuees from Al-Shifa left on foot, one by one and with white flags. They began walking early in the morning towards the Saladin road, where Israel opens a window every day for the exodus of civilians from the north. They are heading to a part of the Strip not exempt from bombing, as Israel expands its operations to the southeast and has also asked civilians to empty that area.
In the south, more than 1.7 million displaced people are crowded together and improvised camps have been built, now converted into mudflats after the arrival of the first rains. From the World Food Program they warned for another day of the lack of water and food and the imminent risk of famine.
Thousands of Gazans remain in the north, where the bombing is more intense. The army addressed residents of eastern Gaza City neighborhoods such as Tel el-Hawa, Sabra, Zeitoun, Shejaiya and Tuffah, telling them to leave because “it is dangerous to stay.” The ground operation is advancing rapidly, oblivious to the calls for a ceasefire coming from abroad and the discourse is radicalizing in Israel where, even representatives considered centrist such as Debbie Biton, from the opposition Yesh Atid, declare to Israeli public radio that “Everyone in Gaza is a terrorist. Let’s let the army do its job.
“They have chosen hatred and rage to avenge the Hamas attack”
After the assault on the Al-Shifa hospital, the capture of the port and the taking of Al-Shati, Israeli troops claim victory west of Gaza City and announce the beginning of a new phase in the ground operation. International pressure is barely perceived in the offices of the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv and the discourse that is repeated is that “there will be no ceasefire until Hamas releases the hostages,” Benjamin Netanyahu insists every day.
It is difficult to find voices critical of the progress of the war in Israel, a country in which “society has chosen hatred and rage to avenge the brutal attack by Hamas on October 7,” says Yehuda Shaul, founder of Breaking The Silence, a group of Army veterans that has been denouncing the excesses of the occupation for two decades. Two of its members lost their lives during the Hamas assault on the kibbutzim near the separation fence.
Netanyahu is as supported from abroad as he is questioned within his country, where a large sector of the population sees him as most responsible for the security error that opened the doors to Hamas and cost the lives of 1,200 people in the towns near the fence. from separation. For this reason, the families also feel discomfort with the war cabinet’s strategy because they feel that it puts the advance of the ground operation in Gaza before the negotiation for their own.
«This time Hamas struck first and did so in a terrible way, so the subsequent military operation has nothing to do with previous offensives. When your blood is boiling it is very difficult to make rational decisions. What we must make clear is that the war crimes committed by Hamas do not justify that our Army should not respect international law,” thinks Yehuda Shaul.
The founder of the veterans group Breaking The Silence believes that “it is time for society to realize that our problem is with the Palestinians, with the decades of occupation and siege on Gaza, and that force will never solve it.” “A political solution is necessary,” he added, “so that Palestinians and Jews can live together on this land.”
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