Unprecedented Israeli Depravity at Al-Shifa Hospital
The Al-Shifa Hospital complex under Israeli
bombardment, with thousands of displaced persons sheltering
inside and outside the buildings.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invaded the Al-Shifa Hospital complex in Gaza City on November 15 with tanks and bulldozers. The attack followed several days of encirclement by Israeli forces. The day before the raid, hospital staff said that they were barred from exiting the facility by the Israeli military. The Israeli forces said that this was to be a "limited" operation to root out Hamas whom it claimed were entrenched in tunnels under the hospital. The depravity that the Israeli forces have visited upon Gaza's largest hospital, its staff, patients and the thousands of displaced persons who sought shelter there is unimaginable. Moreover, the Israelis have produced no evidence to corroborate their claim of resistance tunnels under the hospital, several days after the hospital has been fully under their control.
On November 18, three days after its invasion, the IDF ordered
doctors, patients and displaced people at Gaza's Al-Shifa
Hospital to evacuate at gunpoint, doctors and Palestinian
officials told Al Jazeera.
Dr. Muhammad Zaqout, director general of Gaza hospitals, said
the Israeli army called the hospital management at 8:00 am
[05:00 GMT] and told them to evacuate the complex, the largest
hospital in Gaza, within an hour. They were directed to exit
along a route where "charred bodies" were strewn across the
street, he added. After the Israeli army's impossible deadline
passed, Ismail al-Thawabta, director general of the government
media office in Gaza, said the Israeli army forced out more than
500 wounded people and patients at gunpoint. Those who could
leave, did so on foot as no means of evacuation was provided.
There is no fuel for ambulances or other vehicles.
Munir al-Barsh, a doctor at the hospital, said that the Israeli army warned that all those leaving had to wave a white handkerchief and walk in a single line. "They were humiliated by soldiers all along the road," al-Barsh told Al Jazeera. "Many of the patients were put on wheelchairs or rolling beds. Family members were forced to carry their wounded children or parents themselves. [...] These are horrible, unprecedented scenes," he said.
Patients who cannot move, amputees, and those with critical conditions have had to remain behind with a handful of medical staff, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital, told Al Jazeera. "The situation is really dire," he said.
Nearly 300 patients still require care and could not evacuate, including dozens of premature babies, several of whom died in the past week due to being deprived of the necessary incubators and oxygen by Israel's attacks on the hospital and overall siege of Gaza. The Palestinian Minister of Health Mai al-Kaila said international institutions should intervene so that they are transferred to hospitals in the occupied West Bank or Egypt. On November 19, Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, confirmed the evacuation to Egypt of at least 30 premature babies in a phone call with the Associated Press.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, described "horrifying images" from Al-Shifa, while Egypt called the events there a "war crime" and "a deliberate insult to the United Nations."
November 15 Raid by Israeli Forces
According to eye witness reports by medical personnel, Israeli
forces fired indiscriminately within the hospital during their
raid on November 15. As for the Hamas fighters said to be
sheltering within the hospital, Dr. Zaqout told Al Jazeera,
"Not a single bullet was fired from inside the hospital during
the occupation forces' storming of the complex. He stressed that
the Israeli army did not find any evidence of the members of the
Palestinian resistance hiding in or around the hospital,
contrary to their claims before assailing the complex.
The IDF raid forces Al-Shifa Hospital to disconnect
patients from life-saving equipment and push then into the
hallways, where they attempt to provide care manually. At right,
a young girl receives manual ventilation to keep her alive.
Normally there are 1,500 medical staff members at the hospital. At the time of the Israeli assault, about 1,000 staff were trapped on site, but had been unable to treat patients due to lack of fuel for generators and medicine. The hospital had about 700 patients, 100 in critical condition, 36 premature babies without incubators and more than 7,000 displaced Palestinians. On November 13 Israeli forces destroyed the hospital's solar panel system that provided electricity to its main departments. The hospital had run out of fuel to power generators over the November 11-12 weekend, resulting in the death of dozens of patients, including premature babies.
Al-Shifa Hospital staff also reported that the Israeli soldiers used loudspeakers and ordered young men to surrender themselves. Those within the hospital said about 30 people were taken out into the courtyard, stripped of their clothes, blindfolded and interrogated by Israeli soldiers. Israeli forces also blew up a warehouse containing medicine and medical devices, sources said.
The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said during a briefing in Geneva: "The Israeli military invasion of the Al-Shifa hospital in the city of Gaza is totally unacceptable." He said emphatically that "hospitals are not battlefields." Under international humanitarian law, medical facilities, personnel and vehicles "must be protected from any warfare," he said.
(With files from WHO, Al Jazeera, Reuters, France24.)
This article was published in
Volume 53 Number 23 - November 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2023/Articles/MS53232.HTM
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