A Tunnel Provides Clues to How Hamas Makes use of Gaza’s Hospitals

Gaza’s hospitals have emerged as a focus in Israel’s struggle with Hamas, with either side citing how the opposite has pulled the services into the battle as proof of the enemy’s disregard for the protection of civilians.

In 4 months of struggle, Israeli troops have entered a number of hospitals, together with the Qatari Hospital, Kamal Adwan Hospital and Al-Rantisi Specialised Hospital for Kids, to seek for weapons and fighters. However Al-Shifa Hospital has taken on explicit significance as a result of it’s Gaza’s largest medical facility, and due to Israel’s high-profile claims that Hamas leaders operated a command-and-control heart beneath it. Hamas and the hospital’s employees, in the meantime, insisted it was solely a medical heart.

Al-Shifa’s worth as a navy goal was not instantly clear within the days after the Nov. 15 raid, even after the Israeli navy launched the tunnel video that was used to create the 3-D mannequin seen right here.

However proof examined by The New York Occasions suggests Hamas used the hospital for canopy, saved weapons inside it and maintained a hardened tunnel beneath the advanced that was equipped with water, energy and air-conditioning.

Categorised Israeli intelligence paperwork, obtained and reviewed by The Occasions, point out that the tunnel is no less than 700 ft lengthy, twice so long as the navy revealed publicly, and that it extends past the hospital and certain connects to Hamas’s bigger underground community.

In keeping with categorized photographs reviewed by The Occasions, Israeli troopers discovered underground bunkers, dwelling quarters and a room that seemed to be wired for computer systems and communications tools alongside part of the tunnel past the hospital — chambers that weren’t seen within the video launched by the Israeli navy.

The Israeli navy, nonetheless, has struggled to show that Hamas maintained a command-and-control heart below the ability. Critics of the Israeli navy say the proof doesn’t assist its early claims, noting that it had distributed materials earlier than the raid exhibiting 5 underground complexes and likewise had stated the tunnel community might be reached from wards inside a hospital constructing. Israel has publicly revealed the existence of just one tunnel entrance on the grounds of the hospital, on the shack exterior its primary buildings.

The Israeli navy says that it moved rigorously as a result of the tunnel was booby-trapped and ran out of time to research earlier than it destroyed the tunnel and withdrew from the hospital. Israeli and Qatari officers, talking on situation of anonymity, stated Israel needed to go away the hospital to adjust to the phrases of a brief ceasefire in late November.

American officers have stated their very own intelligence backs up the Israeli case, together with proof that Hamas used Al-Shifa to carry no less than a number of hostages. American intelligence additionally signifies that Hamas fighters evacuated the advanced days earlier than Israeli forces moved into Al-Shifa, destroying paperwork and electronics as they left.

Hospitals are protected below worldwide regulation, even when they supply medical look after combatants, however their use for different acts which can be “dangerous to the enemy” could make them reputable targets for navy motion. However any motion should weigh the anticipated navy benefit in opposition to the anticipated hurt to civilians.

Al-Shifa, Israeli officers have argued, is an instance of Hamas’s willingness to make use of hospitals as cowl and switch civilians into human shields. However critics say it’s also an instance of the toll on civilians when Israeli forces encompass and raid hospitals to pursue Hamas fighters or rescue hostages, operations that may reduce off docs from gas and provides and residents from urgently wanted medical care.

5 untimely infants died at Al-Shifa earlier than the raid “attributable to lack of electrical energy and gas,” in accordance with the U.N. Workplace for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which helped set up the evacuation of 31 different infants.

“Everyone knows that the well being care system is or has collapsed,” Lynn Hastings, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, has informed reporters.

Israel launched its struggle in Gaza after the Hamas-led assault on Oct. 7, wherein no less than 1,200 folks have been killed and greater than 200 have been taken hostage. For the reason that begin of the struggle, greater than 28,000 folks have been killed in Gaza, in accordance with well being officers there.

Within the face of worldwide opprobrium over its raids on hospitals, Israel has publicized proof that it says reveals that Hamas hid fighters among the many sick and injured, and held hostages within the services. The Israeli navy stated that earlier than getting into Al-Shifa, it warned the buildings’ occupants, opened evacuation routes and despatched Arabic-speaking medical groups together with the troopers.

Hamas and Gazan well being officers say the hospitals have served solely as medical services. However past accusing the Israeli navy of planting proof at hospitals, Hamas and Gazan officers haven’t instantly refuted the proof introduced by Israel.

The Israeli navy stated it apprehended dozens of “terror operatives” at Kamal Adwan Hospital in December, and launched movies, on the time, of males carrying weapons. A spokesman for the well being ministry in Gaza stated that Israeli forces had requested the hospital’s directors at hand over the weapons of its safety guards.

After the raid on the Qatari Hospital, the generally used title for the Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics, the Israeli navy confirmed a video on Nov. 5 of what it stated was the doorway to “a tunnel that was getting used for terror infrastructures” on the hospital’s grounds.

However the video seems to indicate one thing else: a water storage space inbuilt 2016, when the hospital was constructed, in accordance with engineering plans and pictures from the hospital’s development reviewed by The Occasions.

The Israeli navy declined to supply extra imagery to assist its assertion that this was a tunnel entryway or a part of a tunnel advanced.

Simply earlier than the Al-Shifa raid, Israeli forces entered Al-Rantisi hospital, on Nov. 13, quickly after its remaining sufferers and employees had left. Inside days, the navy launched two movies that confirmed weapons and explosives it stated it discovered there, and a room the place it stated hostages had been saved. The well being ministry in Gaza disputed the assertions made within the movies and stated the weapons have been planted.

One of many movies launched by Israel confirmed troops dashing into the hospital and showing to search out explosives, weapons and the hostage room. Within the different, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, chief spokesman for the Israeli navy, confirmed off weapons, explosives and different weapons that he stated have been discovered within the basement of the hospital.

The video included footage of a bit of paper taped to a wall within the hospital’s basement. Admiral Hagari stated the paper — a grid with Arabic phrases and numbers inside every sq. — might be a schedule for guarding hostages “the place each terrorist writes his title.”

The Gazan well being ministry stated it was nothing greater than a piece schedule. However the calendar begins on Oct. 7, the day of the Hamas terrorist assault on Israel, and an Arabic title written on the prime makes use of the militants’ title for the assault: “Al Aqsa Flood Battle, 7/10/2023.”

Given its dimension and historical past, taking management of Al-Shifa was all the time a extra vital aim for the Israeli navy than the opposite smaller services.

There may be substantial unbiased proof that Hamas constructed an unlimited tunnel community throughout Gaza. Senior Israeli protection officers, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate intelligence issues, estimate the community is between 350 and 450 miles — extraordinary figures for a territory that at its longest level is simply 25 miles. The officers estimate there are millions of entrances to the community.

There may be additionally established documentation that Hamas used Al-Shifa earlier than the struggle to masks a few of its actions. Throughout Israel’s three-week struggle with Hamas in 2008, armed Hamas fighters in civilian clothes have been seen roaming Al-Shifa’s corridors and killing an Israeli collaborator, in accordance with a Occasions correspondent reporting in Gaza on the time. Six years later, throughout the subsequent spherical of combating, the militants routinely held information conferences on the hospital and used it as a protected assembly place for Hamas officers to talk with journalists.

After that struggle, Amnesty Worldwide reported that Hamas had used deserted areas of Al-Shifa, “together with the outpatients’ clinic space, to detain, interrogate, torture and in any other case ill-treat suspects, at the same time as different elements of the hospital continued to operate as a medical heart.”

Israel’s critics, although, countered with statements made on the time by two Norwegian docs, who described themselves as pro-Palestinian activists and had labored in Gaza throughout the 2014 struggle. They insisted that they noticed no Hamas presence at Al-Shifa.

Israel has additionally launched video footage, taken by the hospital’s personal safety cameras, which it says reveals two hostages being delivered to Al-Shifa shortly after being kidnapped within the Oct. 7 assault.

The Al-Shifa tunnel was found by following ducts that ran underground from air-conditioning items that have been powered by the hospital’s electrical energy provide and mounted on considered one of its buildings, officers stated. Israeli troopers additionally discovered proof that the hospital’s water provide was being fed to the tunnel.

The Israeli navy has additionally displayed weapons and different tools it stated have been discovered inside Al-Shifa, together with grenades positioned close to an MRI machine. Among the many cache introduced to journalists have been belongings that Israeli officers stated had been taken from hostages, together with a bag emblazoned with the title Be’eri, a kibbutz attacked by Hamas.

The navy additionally stated it discovered weapons in Al-Shifa’s parking zone, and a Toyota automobile an identical to these used within the Oct. 7 assault and loaded with the identical tools that militants carried throughout the raid, together with weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. Israeli officers speculated that it was a spare automobile not used within the assault.

A few of what the Israeli navy has proven thus far doesn’t wholly match the outline of a terrorist headquarters that it supplied forward of its floor invasion of Gaza on Oct. 27.

Beneath Al-Shifa, the Israeli navy wrote in a prolonged submit on its web site, “lies a labyrinth of tunnels and underground compounds utilized by Hamas’s leaders to direct terrorist actions and rocket hearth and to fabricate and retailer a wide range of weapons and ammunition.”

There might not be a approach to instantly assess that declare. Israeli forces remained at Al-Shifa for just a little greater than per week.

Hours earlier than Israeli forces left the hospital on Nov. 24, troopers lined the tunnel with explosives and destroyed it in a blast that despatched plumes of smoke excessive into the air and rocked buildings on the bottom above.