Hamas headquarters or hospital? Why has Israel stormed Gaza's Al-Shifa?

On Monday (13 November), the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the Al-Shifa Hospital, the Gaza Strip’s largest and most advanced hospital, had stopped functioning due to loss of power and water supply. Today (15 November), the troops from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) raided the hospital after alleging that Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, has a command centre underneath it used to conceal military operations and hostages. Israel’s claim has been repeatedly denied by the hospital officials and the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. What exactly is happening inside the hospital? Is it as Israel alleges a command centre for the Palestinian terrorist group? We take a better look at what is happening there and why? Where is Al-Shifa Hospital? What is its purpose? The Dar Al-Shifa (House of Healing) hospital is the leading medical centre in the Gaza Strip. Located in Gaza City, in the north of the tiny Palestinian enclave, the hospital comprises a group of six-storey buildings. It had between 600 and 900 beds and thousands of staff, and before the war, provided a range of services such as MRI scans, dialysis that almost no other hospital in Gaza offered. Since the Israel-Hamas war began on 7 October, the hospital has also become a shelter to those displaced by the fighting and also by those who are seeking cover from the fierce bombardment by the Israeli side. [caption id=“attachment_13389502” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] The Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City is the leading medical facility in the enclave. A group of six-storey buildings, the Al-Shifa hospital has between 600 and 900 beds and thousands of staff. File image/AFP[/caption] What has happened so far in today’s raids? For the past few days, the Al-Shifa Hospital has become the focus of the Israel-Hamas war. It has been caught in the crossfire of the war, putting its patients and staffers at risk. In fact, the hospital stopped functioning on Monday owing to lack of essential supplies like electricity and medicines, putting newborns, patients and others at a graver risk. In fact, earlier, the staff at the hospital said that three babies had died along with other patients, as they had to be pulled off incubators. Hospital staff had, earlier, also alleged that the IDF was striking the hospital and had laid siege around it. And on Wednesday morning, it was reported that the IDF had entered the facility and carrying out a “precise and targeted operation against Hamas”. In a post on X, Israel stated: “IDF forces are carrying out a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital, based on intelligence information and an operational necessity. The IDF is conducting a ground operation in Gaza to defeat Hamas and rescue our hostages. Israel is at war with Hamas, not with the civilians in Gaza. “The IDF forces include medical teams and Arabic speakers, who have undergone specified training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment, with the intent that no harm is caused to the civilians being used by Hamas as human shields.” [caption id=“attachment_13389522” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] A satellite image shows Al-Shifa hospital, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Gaza. AP[/caption] The IDF also signalled that once inside the hospital, it would continue to have a presence there, writing, “in the continuation of the operation, incubators, medical equipment and baby food are expected to be transferred to the hospital”. The doctors and other medical staff confirmed that the IDF was present inside the facility, with Dr Munir al-Bursh, director-general of the Gaza health ministry telling Al Jazeera that Israeli forces had raided the western side of the sprawling site. Ashraf al-Qidra, a Gaza health ministry spokesperson, added that the forces was in the basement, and searching the basement. “They are inside the complex, shooting and carrying out bombings”. This happened after Israeli forces reportedly raided the surgery and emergency departments. A journalist, Khader Al Za’anoun, also told CNN that Israeli tanks had breached the complex, saying, “We can see them pointing the guns of the tanks toward the hospital.” Various accounts are being reported about the Israeli raids in the hospital. Dr Ahmed El Mokhallalati, a surgeon at Al-Shifa, told Al Jazeera that patients were fearful and there was a lot of uncertainty. “We don’t know what they will do to us. We don’t know whether they will kill people or terrorise them. People’s fear stems from not knowing the occupation’s next step.” [caption id=“attachment_13389532” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] An injured Palestinian man receives treatment at the Al-Shifa hospital. On Monday, the facility stopped functioning owing to the disruption in supplies and power. File image/AP[/caption] Currently, it is being reported that an estimated 650 patients remain in the hospital. Between 5,000 and 7,000 displaced civilians are also trapped inside the hospital grounds and under constant fire from Israeli snipers and drones. Far away from the action, the deputy consul general of Israel in New York also provided inputs on the raids while speaking to BBC. Tsach Saar when asked about the action on the hospital reiterated the IDF’s statement, calling it a “precise and targeted operation”. However, when pushed further on what that meant, he responded saying, “It means that we are doing everything we can to dismantle the capabilities of Hamas… Everything we can means that we take the weapons, that we dismantle… their fighters, their terrorists, while making sure that we minimise the collateral damage, the loss of innocent civilian lives.” Why the raids on the hospital though? Israel has been slowly closing in on the hospital and said that the operations today were because Hamas was using it as a command centre. Israel alleges that Hamas has built its headquarters in bunkers and tunnels under the hospital, effectively using the building, patients and staff as a human shield.

On Monday, Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, showed footage of what he said was a Hamas weapons cache found in the basement of Gaza’s Rantisi Hospital for Children, another hospital in the enclave. A day later, the White House also reiterated Israel’s allegations, saying that Hamas was storing weapons and operating a command node from the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. “Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages,” John Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, told reporters traveling with President Joe Biden. After the raids began, IDF’s spokesperson justifying their actions said that the Al-Shifa Hopsital had become “the beating heart” of Hamas. “Our goal is to seek out Hamas wherever they’re hiding and the hospital compound is a central hub of their operations, perhaps even the beating heart and maybe even a centre of gravity,” he told CNN in an interview shortly after the IDF began its military operation inside Al-Shifa.

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However, these claims have been denied by Hamas as well as officials at the hospital. Hamas blamed Israel and the US for the raids on the hospital and added that it constituted a failure by the United Nations to defend Palestinians. Hamas claimed the US had given Israel, “a green light… to commit more massacres against civilians” by supporting what it called Israel’s “false narrative” – that Hamas was using Al-Shifa hospital as a command and control base. Additionally, Ashraf al-Qidra said that “there are only doctors, patients and displaced people” inside Al-Shifa Hospital. “We have nothing to be afraid of or hide,” Al Jazeera Arabic quoted him as saying. Are the raids lawful? As per the laws of war, mandated by the Geneva Conventions, hospitals get special protections during war. However, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), they lose protections if combatants are using the premises to hide fighters or store weapons – exactly what Israel is accusing Hamas of doing at Al Shifa. Ardi Imseis, an international law expert at Queen’s University in Canada, was quoted as saying that Israel carries the burden to produce evidence and prove its claim that the hospital has been used by Hamas as a base. “The object of the attack is a civilian object. Until such time that the Israelis provide proof that it has been converted into a military object, the civilian nature of the object does not change,” he said, referring to Al-Shifa Hospital. With inputs from agencies