Photo: Collected
Gaza’s Shifa Hospital has become the focus of a dayslong stalemate in Israel’s war against the Hamas militant group.
Shifa is Gaza’s largest and best-equipped hospital. But Israel claims the facility also is used by Hamas for military purposes. It says Hamas has built a vast underground command complex center below the hospital, connected by tunnels.
Since Israel declared war against Hamas in response to a bloody cross-border attack by the Islamic group on Oct. 7, its forces have moved in on Shifa. While Israel says it is willing to allow staff and patients to evacuate, Palestinians say Israeli forces have fired at evacuees and that it is too dangerous to move the most vulnerable patients. Meanwhile, doctors say the facility has run out of fuel and that patients are beginning to die.
Here is a closer look at the Shifa standoff.
A HOSPITAL AND A SHELTER
Shifa is the leading hospital in a health care system that has largely collapsed after years of conflict, chronic underfunding and an Israeli-Egyptian blockade aimed at weakening Hamas.
Shifa boasts over 500 beds and services like MRI scans, dialysis and an intensive care unit. It conducts roughly half of all the medical operations that take place in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
After the war erupted, tens of thousands crammed into the hospital grounds to seek shelter. As the war has moved closer to the hospital, most of those huddling there have fled south — joining some two-thirds of the territory’s 2.3 million residents who have left their homes.
But hundreds of people, including medical workers, premature babies and other vulnerable patients, remain, staffers say.
On Saturday, the hospital announced that it had run out of fuel. Health officials say at least 32 patients, including three babies, have died. They say 36 other babies are at risk of dying because life-saving equipment can’t function.
The Health Ministry released a photo Monday showing about a dozen premature babies wrapped in blankets on a bed to keep them warm. “I hope that they will remain alive despite the disaster in which this hospital is passing through,” said ministry spokesman Medhat Abbas.
International law gives hospitals special protections during war. But hospitals can lose those protections if combatants use them to hide fighters or store weapons, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Still, there must be plenty of warning to allow evacuation of staff and patients. If harm to civilians from an attack is disproportionate to the military objective, it is illegal under international law.
ISRAEL'S CASE AGAINST HAMAS
Israel has long accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields. The group often fires rockets toward Israel from crowded residential areas, and its fighters have battled Israeli troops inside densely populated neighborhoods.
Throughout the war, Israel has released photos and video footage showing what it says are weapons and other military installations inside or next to mosques, schools and hospitals.
Late Monday, Israel's chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, showed footage of what he said was a Hamas weapons cache found in the basement of Gaza's Rantisi Hospital for Children.
Hagari said he entered the hospital with Israeli troops on Monday, a day after the facility’s last patients were evacuated. The hospital ran out of fuel last week, and Israel had ordered people to leave as it conducts its ground offensive.
Hagari entered a room decorated with a colorful children’s drawing of a tree, with weapons lying across the floor. He said they included explosive vests, automatic rifles, bombs and rocket-propelled grenades.
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