Israeli forces are near a hospital
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society is On Its Knees : Israel’s Military Forces in Gaza Call for the Evacuation of Hospitals
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 hospitals need to be evacuated so we can deal with Hamas,” said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman. “We intend on dealing with Hamas who have turned hospitals into fortified positions.”
With Israel consolidating its hold on northern Gaza, its forces are closing in on a sprawling medical center that for Israelis and Palestinians alike has emerged as a symbol of the other side’s inhumanity.
Israel’s military told everyone to leave, including staff, patients and civilians, who were on the hospital grounds. The military said Hamas fighters were also present and tried to prevent civilians from leaving. The military said that many civilians left by foot or by ambulance. The “terrorist” who held around 1,000 civilians captive at Rantisi was killed by Israel’s military.
The medical system in Gaza is on its knees, said the director-general of the World Health Organization.
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 hospitals are no longer open, he said.
The Israeli military maintains it hasn’t directly targeted a hospital, but Gaza health officials say that has been the case in the last few days.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on social media that Gaza City’s Al-Quds Hospital is “out of service and no longer operational” because of “the depletion of available fuel and power outage.” The PRCS, which runs Al-Quds Hospital, said hundreds of patients were trapped and 14,000 people were sheltering there.
A courtyard in the Al Shifa Complex which has served as a shelter for the injured since the Israeli incursion began, was the location of several videos shared online by witnesses.
Robert Mardini, director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said on social media that the “unbearably desperate” situation at Al-Shifa Hospital must stop. United Nations humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said there can be “no justification for acts of war in health care facilities.”
The director of the medical complex said the situation facing hospitals is tragic.
The hospital is called Al Shifa by Israel, and it has become shorthand for Hamas’ willingness to turn its own people into human shields.
The militants, Israeli security officials say, have spent the better part of 16 years building a vast command complex under the hospital, and setting up similar bases underneath other medical facilities in the enclave. American officials agree, citing their own intelligence.
While it is impossible to independently verify many of the assertions of either side, the competing claims are likely to be tested soon. The hospital, Israeli officials said, was spared in past Israeli operations out of concern for civilian life, but at the cost of leaving whatever may be underneath it intact.
It is a mistake that Israel will not repeat this time, the officials said. They say that the complex under Al Shifa is one of the principal Israeli targets of the war and will not be left untouched, despite the growing international outcry to spare Al Shifa and other hospitals.
Doctors Without Borders released a voice memo from Dr. Mohammed Obeid from inside Al-Shifa Hospital saying the lives of dozens of babies are in peril after their incubators shut down because fuel to power generators ran out.
“We had two neonatal patients die actually because the incubator is not working because there is no electricity,” Obeid said. So the situation is very bad. We need help.”
Towards a Palestinian State in Gaza: Israeli Military Operations, Hamas, and the Security & Security Threats in the Gaza Strip
Israel has not allowed fuel to enter Gaza for more than a month. According to the Israeli officials, the military continues to clash with Hamas in the vicinity of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, but they don’t say that Al-ShiFA is under siege.
The UN says there is only one shower in its shelters for 700 people in southern Gaza.
Washington is trying to prevent Israel from reoccupying Gaza. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the U.S. envisions a Palestinian government in both Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a step toward Palestinian statehood, which Netanyahu staunchly opposes.
The Palestinian Health Ministry reports more than 11,000 people in Gaza have been killed in Israeli military operations since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people.
