Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator
Israel has insisted that the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza is sitting on top of a network of tunnels which are the Hamas headquarters in Gaza. The Israeli government have offered no credible proof, and only cite secret intelligence as their source.
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, Israeli army spokesperson, told CNN the hospital and compound were for Hamas “a central hub of their operations, perhaps even the beating heart and maybe even a centre of gravity”.
US President Joe Biden was not falling for their claims, and on Tuesday insisted that hospitals must be protected.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Biden, and Biden flip-flopped his position and gave the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) the green-light to attack and occupy the hospital.
While CNN was covering the Trump trials, and the 2024 US presidential race, Al Jazeera and other Middle Eastern media with journalists inside Gaza, were broadcasting images of terrified doctors and patients lining the halls of the hospital. Doctors on duty at the time reported that IDF soldiers were tying up doctors and health professionals in the hospital, while beating some Doctors and patients as well.
Where is the credible evidence to justify an attack and occupation of a hospital in a war zone? Human rights experts point out that hospitals, healthcare workers and ambulances are protected by international law.
Israel gets a lot of their secret intelligence from informants inside Gaza. People who are poor and need the paycheck, or those who may have an ideological difference with Hamas.
The other common source Israel depends on is torture. On October 7, the day of the Hamas attack on Israelis, some Hamas members may have survived and were captured. Every Palestinian arrested by the IDF are always tortured, including women and children.
Torture has been proven to produce worthless intelligence. Any person who is undergoing excruciating pain will answer anything to get the beatings to stop. Research has proven that the answers, or information you get from torture are mainly faulty, and this has caused many intelligence services in the Middle East and in the West to drop the practice.
Did someone under the pain of torture say that Al Shifa Hospital sits atop the Hamas command center?
A military expert in the Middle East, on the condition of anonymity, said that Hamas likely keeps the location of their headquarters secret, and the information is available on a ‘need to know’ basis. Only the most senior members would likely know the location, and the local informants would not have that information, nor would the fighters who participated on the October 7 attack.
The same military expert offered his theory: that the IDF want the Al Shifa Hospital as their headquarters because it is centrally located in the north, a substantial building, and has plenty of resources inside for electricity production and health care for the IDF. If his theory is correct, we may be presented with fabricated evidence of a secret Hamas headquarters by the IDF.
Regardless of how flimsy the evidence, the White House will rubber-stamp it with their seal of approval. We can’t forget General Colin Powell in Congress in 2003 with the small vial of baby powder claiming it to be Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Fabrications and lies are a specialty served up hot on a bed of media distortions by the Biden administration.
The IDF hurriedly deleted a social media post they made claiming that all hospitals and ambulances in Gaza were a legitimate military target as Hamas used them. They were working up to the Al Shifa Hospital attack and wanted to test the waters.
Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa Hospital, located in northern Rimal in Gaza City, was built in 1946 during British rule.
“In Gaza, as Israeli forces enter Al-Shifa hospital, we call once again for the protection of medical staff, patients and displaced civilians sheltered inside the hospital,” Doctors Without Borders said on X.
“We are extremely worried for their lives,” it stressed.
“There are reports that some people who fled the hospital have been shot at, wounded and even killed,” wrote WHO on X on Saturday.
Decomposed bodies were buried in a mass grave at the hospital to ward off contagions. Dr. Ahmad Mokhallalati, a surgeon who is currently in the hospital, told Al Jazeera that gunshots can be heard surrounding the hospital.
Mokhallalati said 650 patients remain at the hospital, including about 100 in critical condition, with 2,000 to 3,000 displaced Palestinians seeking shelter in the building, and 700 medical staff.
36 premature babies were recently taken off their incubators because the station supplying them oxygen was destroyed in Israeli shellings three days ago, and three babies died.
The IDF have stripped naked people in the courtyard of the hospital amid rain and winter temperatures while interrogating them as Israel tanks approached while firing.
At least 11,320 Palestinians have been killed, including over 7,800 women and children, and more than 29,200 others have been injured, according to the latest figures from Palestinian authorities.
According to experts, the Al Shifa attack and occupation is part of the Israeli vision for a forceful displacement of everyone in northern Gaza. Food and water supplies have run out, and the destruction of the last remaining source of medical care is a strategic Israeli military goal.
“The war against [Hamas] is advancing with full force, and it has one goal: to win. There is no alternative to victory,” Netanyahu said on Saturday, and has rejected international calls for a ceasefire.
Netanyahu has clearly stated it is his goal to remain in Gaza as an occupying force indefinitely, despite the US, Egypt, and Jordan opposing such a plan.
Netanyahu also made clear he wanted Israel to retain overall security control after any conflict “with the ability to go in whenever we want in order to kill terrorists”.
In the face of millions of protesters across the world, we still have never once heard Biden call for a ceasefire.
Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award winning journalist
