Gaza’s hospitals have been hit by Israeli airstrikes, and the Gaza Strip is under the watchdog of the Hamas group
But as Hamas rocket attacks continue, and artillery shelling and small-arms fire intensifies within the territory, determining the source of the damage detected by satellite imagery becomes increasingly difficult.
Israeli officials say that the Hamas group killed 1,400 people and took more than 240 hostages during the attack on the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian officials in Gaza say more than 100 health care facilities have been damaged in Israeli attacks and more than 40 ambulances destroyed over the past month.
“It’s just steadily increasing,” said Van Den Hoek, a satellite imagery and remote sensing expert who has been studying this imagery since the war’s onset. “There’s broad damage in areas where people live — cities, refugee camps.”
The Gaza Strip is located between the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt and Israel. Its footprint is similar to that of Philadelphia, but with a half million more people there are many packed into high-rises.
The Israeli military ordered residents of northern Gaza to leave to south of the Wadi Gaza because it splits the Gaza Strip in two. It would be impossible for so many people to move without dire consequences, the UN said at the time.
The Israeli military has denied targeting Gaza’s hospitals. Despite this, Israeli airstrikes on or near hospitals in the northern half of Gaza continue, according to witnesses and international aid groups.
The Health Ministry in Gaza says at least 45 people were killed by bombs on the Al-Maghazi refugee camp. The Israeli military said Sunday that it was considering whether or not it was active at the time. The AP is reporting that 13 people are dead after Israeli airstrikes near the Bureij refugee camp.
Videos verified by The New York Times showed what appeared to be a projectile flying into the hospital’s courtyard and striking an area where displaced Gazans were resting overnight. People’s screams could be heard. One man was filmed lying on the ground in pain, with his leg apparently mangled. The maternity building and outpatient clinic were among several parts of the hospital that had been hit on Friday.
The International Conventions of 1949 say civilian hospitals can be attacked, but must be protected by the warring parties.
Hamas denies the Israeli allegation that it has headquarters under Shifa Hospital. But the militant group does acknowledge building a vast tunnel network, and it is widely believed to be operating underground in and around sensitive civilian sites.
For Hamas, this is a “win-win strategy,” said Pnina Sharvit Baruch, a lawyer who served in Israel’s army as a top legal adviser on military operations.
“Either Israel refrains from attacking this [Hamas] military infrastructure because civilians might get killed. Or Israel does attack. Civilians get killed and the whole world puts pressure on Israel,” said Sharvit Baruch, now with the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
“The Israeli military has been launching explosive weapons in densely crowded city blocks, causing tremendous civilian harm. That’s predictable,” Bashi said.
The Israel-Israel War in Gaza is Not the Same as In Gaza: Human Rights Watch Observations of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital
However, this shield is not absolute. The Geneva Conventions go on to say that a hospital can lose this protected status if an armed group uses the hospital to carry out “acts harmful to the enemy.”
And any retaliation would have to be proportionate. Lawyers said a lone shooter wouldn’t give the army the right to destroy the entire building.
The former Israeli military lawyer, Sharvit Baruch, spent years working with Israeli commanders as they compiled target lists during times of relative calm.
The first was an Oct. 17 explosion in the parking lot of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. Palestinians said several hundreds were killed and blamed an Israeli airstrike. The cause of the rocket firing was caused by the Palestinian militant group, Israel said. U.S. and other intelligence agencies also investigated, and said the evidence pointed to a Palestinian rocket.
At least some of the casualties were among the thousands of Palestinians who are camping out on the grounds of Shifa and other hospitals, hoping they will provide at least a bit more safety than other places in Gaza, a territory under almost round-the-clock bombardment.
Human Rights watch is looking into this incident, Sari Bashi said, noting that Israel said that Hamas did not attack the hospital. She also said that Israel gave no warning it was striking.
The kinds of rules that all of the nations have agreed to are what she said. The Israeli military is not accepting the rules on its own.
In addition, Hamas has always targeted Israeli civilians, from scores of suicide bombings in the 1990s and early 2000s, to its Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel.
The group holds about 240 hostages, most of them civilians, and during the past month, has fired thousands of rockets in ongoing attacks directed at civilians in Israeli cities.
The videos that were verified by The Times showed a projectile hitting the courtyard of Al-Shifa Hospital, hitting an area where Gazans were resting overnight.
Israeli troops were closing in on hospitals in Gaza City on Friday, an Israeli official said, as its battles with Hamas engulfed more of the city and raised fears that vulnerable patients and sheltering civilians with nowhere to flee could be harmed by Israeli strikes and running street battles.
“We’re aware of the sensitivity of the hospitals. Richard Hecht told reporters that the Israeli military was close to them.
He said that Israeli forces generally do not fire on hospitals, but added, “if we see Hamas terrorists firing from hospitals, we’ll do what we need to do.” He also said that Israeli troops were “closing in” on Hamas in northern Gaza.
He said that doctors and nurses were frustrated because the operation rooms and intensive care units were full.
“If conditions were better than this, we could have saved their lives,” Dr. Abu Salmiya said. From the hospital, he said, armed clashes and powerful explosions could be heard.
Even as medical supplies and fuel needed to power generators has dwindled, doctors at Al Shifa have been treating a growing number of patients.
“At this point, there’s just so little we can do for the wounded we receive, only the bare minimum,” said Dr. Abu Salmiya. We can’t provide complex operations because we don’t have the capacity or the medication.
Hamas officials and the Al Shifa hospital: is there a threat to Israeli ground raids in the region? A statement by Dr. Abu Salmiya
Hamas officials and Al Shifa administrators have denied the accusations. Dr. Abu Salmiya said international organizations were welcome to investigate the site and see if they could find any evidence of Hamas’s presence there.
Inside the Al Shifa hospital itself, staff members were preparing for the worst, including a potential Israeli ground raid into the hospital, Dr. Abu Salmiya said. He said there were no plans to completely evacuate the complex.