Israeli Defense of the Al Shifa Hospital Complex: “Is the Israel Army in control?” Israel’s Defense Secretary Dr. Aharonov-Israeli
At least one projectile struck inside the Al Shifa complex, Gaza’s largest hospital, early Friday, though the source and extent of the damage were not immediately clear. The Israeli military said that the projectile that hit the hospital complex was fired by Palestinian militants at Israeli troops. The hospital compound was struck four times on Friday, according to the director of the hospital.
Israel must give the hospital “due warning” if the attacks are to stop and the other side must allow a reasonable time limit.
The Israeli military has repeatedly singled out Al Shifa in statements in recent weeks, saying that the hospital gives cover to a Hamas military compound. According to the military spokesman, Hamas has control in different departments of the hospital.
The larger debate over civilian casualties included this. More than 11,000 people have been killed in Gaza since fighting began Oct. 7, mostly civilians, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. Most of the 1,400 dead in Israel from the Oct. 7 Hamas attack were also civilians, according to Israeli officials.
Israeli Defense: A Win-Win Strategy for the Security and Security of Israel’s Military Infrastructure in a War of Stable Regimes, Revisited
This is a win-win strategy for Hamas, according to a lawyer who served in Israel’s army.
“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.
A 1977 addition to the international rules of warfare state that “under no circumstances shall medical units be used in an attempt to shield military objectives from attack.”
And any retaliation would have to be proportionate. A lone gunman firing from a hospital wouldn’t give an army the right to destroy the entire building, according to lawyers.
The former Israeli military lawyer, Sharvit Baruch, spent years working with Israeli commanders as they compiled target lists during times of relative calm.
The attacks on the Shifa hospital: Israeli planes, rockets, humanitarian aid, and human rights watch elucidating the violations of the Fourth Amendment
An explosion in the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital parking lot was the first of it’s kind. Palestinians blamed an Israeli air strike for hundreds of deaths. Israel denied involvement, saying the cause was an errant rocket fired by Palestinian militants. The U.S. intelligence agencies said that the evidence pointed to a Palestinian rocket.
Some of the casualties are among the thousands of Palestinians who are camping out in the grounds of hospitals and hoping they will be more safe than other places in Gaza.
Human Rights watch is looking into the attack on ShiFA hospital, they said that Hamas left the hospital not attacking it. She said that Israel didn’t give her warning of the strike.
She said that all the nations in the world have agreed to these kinds of rules. “And even on its own statements, the Israeli military is not accepting those rules.”
Hamas targeted Israeli civilians from the early 2000s to the 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.
Many videos were shared online showing people with injuries in a courtyard that was part of the Al Shifa Complex which has been used as a shelter for the displaced since the Israeli incursion began.
“We’re aware of the sensitivity of the hospitals. Richard Hecht, Israeli military spokesman, told reporters on Friday that they are closing in on them.
The hospitals have to be evacuated in order to deal with Hamas. Hospitals have been turned into fortified positions by Hamas.
He said that operation rooms and intensive care units were at full capacity and that frustrated doctors and nurses had been forced to leave dozens of seriously wounded people.
“If conditions were better than this, we could have saved their lives,” Dr. Abu Salmiya said. Powerful explosions and armed battles could be heard from the hospital.
Doctors at Al Shifa have faced dire conditions , treating a growing number of patients even as medical supplies and fuel needed to power generators have dwindled.
The bare minimum is what the doctors can do for the wounded. We don’t have the capacity to provide complex operations for people who need them.
Hamas and Al Shifa in the Gaza Strip: “The situation facing hospitals is tragic,” says Dr. Abu Salmiya
The officials from Hamas and the administrators of Al ShiFA 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.
The staff was preparing for a potential Israeli ground raid on the hospital. They have no immediate plans to totally evacuate the complex, he added.
TEL AVIV, Israel —Israel’s military pressed ahead Saturday with a campaign to force the evacuation of hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip so it can pursue Hamas militants it believes are taking cover there.
The increased pressure from the Israeli military on Gaza’s hospitals to evacuate over the past two days has further stressed an overtaxed medical system in the besieged area.
Israel’s military said it surrounded Al Rantisi and told everyone to leave, including staff, patients and civilians sheltering on the hospital grounds. The military said Hamas fighters were also present and tried to prevent civilians from leaving. But eventually many civilians left, the military said — many by foot, some by ambulance. Israel’s military said it killed the “terrorist” who held approximately 1,000 civilians “hostage” at Rantisi.
The World Health Organization director-general said that Gaza’s medical system is on its knees due to the forced evacuates and bombardment from Israel.
The WHO’s director-general said on Friday that the organization had documented five attacks on five hospitals in a single day in Gaza in the previous week. Half of Gaza’s 36 hospitals and two-thirds of the territory’s primary health care centers are no longer functioning, he added.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said with the intensified Israeli bombardments around hospitals as of Friday, several facilities were directly hit.
By Saturday, Al Shifa hospital, the largest such facility in Gaza, had lost power, forcing a shutdown of services requiring electricity, according to Palestinian health officials in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. The ministries intensive care and medical departments and the oxygen equipment stopped working.
The situation facing hospitals “is tragic in every sense of the word,” the director of Al ShiFA Medical Complex said on Friday.