EXPLANER
Thousands of people, including patients, are trapped in Gaza’s largest hospital amid a deadly Israeli siege.
Israeli forces attacked Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital on Wednesday after laying siege to the enclave’s largest medical facility for several days. Thousands of people are trapped inside, with decomposing corpses buried in a mass grave on the hospital premises. Here’s what you need to know:
What is happening at al-Shifa Hospital?
- Dr Ahmad Mokhallalati, a surgeon at al-Shifa currently hospitalized, told Al Jazeera that gunshots could be heard in all directions in the medical facility.
- Dr Mokhallalati said 650 patients remained in hospital, with around 100 in critical condition. Between 2,000 and 3,000 displaced Palestinians seek shelter in the building. In addition, there are 700 medical staff, he said.
- Israeli forces called medics to al-Shifa. “Your presence at the hospital will create a state of fear and hysteria among the patients here. … The corridors are full of people, all the floors are full of people,” Dr. Munir al Barsh told an Israeli soldier in a shared online call.
- The hospital is also home to 36 premature babies who were recently removed from their incubators because the station that provided them with oxygen was destroyed during Israeli bombings three days ago, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said, reporting reporting from Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. Three babies have already died.
- Those evacuated from inside al-Shifa were forced to sit in the hospital’s outer courtyard. They are forced to strip and are interrogated outside in the rain and cold, Mahmoud said.
- “Israeli forces tried to kill anyone who entered inside…No one did anything. We don’t have any form of resistance inside the hospital,” journalist Jihad Abu Shanab, who is inside the medical complex, told Al Jazeera.
- “The shelling has been really very aggressive over the last nine hours, with continuous shooting throughout the area,” Dr Mokhallalati said. He also said Israeli tanks could be heard approaching the hospital.
Where is al-Shifa Hospital located?
- Al-Shifa is located in the northern Gaza City, 500 meters from the Mediterranean coast.
- It is a complex of buildings and courtyards located a few hundred meters from the small fishing port in Gaza City.
- It is sandwiched between the Shati refugee camp and the Remal neighborhood, which was destroyed in the first days of Israeli bombings that killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, including nearly 8,000 women and children.
Is there any evidence for Israel’s claims?
- So far, there is no concrete evidence for Israeli claims that the hospital was used for military purposes by the Hamas armed group, which carried out an attack on Israel on October 7 and captured more than 200 people. . Israel claimed it was targeting Hamas assets.
- Israeli forces now say there is no indication of the presence of captives inside the hospital and testing continues, Al Jazeera’s Sara Khairat reported from occupied East Jerusalem.
- Khairat added that this contradicts Israel’s earlier statement that they knew exactly what they were walking into.
- The onus is on Israel to produce evidence and prove that Hamas is using al-Shifa for military purposes, Ardi Imseis, an international law expert at Queen’s University in Canada, told Al Jazeera.
- “The object of the attack is civilian property. Until the Israelis provide proof that it has been converted into a military object, the civilian nature of the object does not change,” he added.
- Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine director, told Al Jazeera that “the Israeli government has not presented any evidence that would justify stripping hospitals of their special protections under international humanitarian law.”
What did Hamas say?
- Hamas accused the United States on Wednesday of giving Israel the “green light” to attack Gaza’s largest hospital. The Palestinian group said US President Joe Biden is “fully responsible” for the Israeli attack on al-Shifa hospital. The accusation came a day after the White House said U.S. intelligence sources had corroborated Israel’s claims that Hamas buried an operations center beneath the hospital.
- Hamas has denied carrying out military operations from hospitals in this enclave of 2.3 million inhabitants.
- A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, who requested anonymity, told the Reuters news agency that he did not support an air attack on a hospital and did not want to witness an exchange of shootings in a hospital.
What did Israel say?
- Israeli army spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner told CNN that the hospital and compound were “a central center of operations for Hamas, perhaps even the beating heart and perhaps even be a center of gravity.”
- Israel said in its statement Wednesday that it had given Gaza authorities 12 hours to cease military activities at the hospital. “Unfortunately, this was not the case,” the military statement said.
- Although the Israeli military said Wednesday that its forces had provided incubators and baby food to al-Shifa, the practicality of this measure is questionable. People pointed out that the hospital needed electricity, which Israel cut off, not incubators.
And after?
- Tamer Qarmout, assistant professor of public policy at the Doha Institute of Advanced Studies, told Al Jazeera that the al-Shifa raid was part of a larger project aimed at “forced displacement of those who remain in northern Gaza.
- With food and water supplies already running out, the destruction of the medical center is a tactic aimed at emptying the north, Qarmout said.