War between Israel and Hamas: Israeli army takes journalists on controlled visit to Gaza hospital
Nearly 48 hours after entering Gaza’s largest medical complex, the Israeli army escorted New York Times journalists Thursday evening through a landscape of wartime destruction to a stone and concrete shaft on the site with a staircase descending into the earth – evidence, the report said: of a Hamas military facility beneath the hospital.
But Colonel Elad Tsury, commander of Israel’s Seventh Brigade, said Israeli forces had not ventured through the shaft of Al-Shifa hospital for fear of booby traps. He said it was discovered earlier in the day under a pile of sand on the northern edge of the complex.
In the darkness it was unclear where the shaft led or how deep it went, although the military said it had sent a drone down at least several meters. Inside, electrical wiring was visible, along with a metal staircase.
The controlled visit will not resolve the question of whether Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that rules Gaza, used Al-Shifa hospital to hide weapons and command centers. as Israel said.
The claim is central to Israel’s defense of the death toll caused by its military campaign in Gaza, which Gaza health officials say has killed more than 11,000 people. Israeli officials say the extreme loss of life has been caused in part by Hamas’ decision to hide its military fortifications and command centers within civilian infrastructure such as Al-Shifa.
Hamas denies the accusation and says Israel is committing war crimes by targeting civilian facilities such as hospitals.
The Israeli military has said that Hamas used a huge maze of tunnels under the hospital as a secret base, but since then announced early Wednesday that his troops had entered the site, the military has yet to present public documentation of such an extensive network. As the international community increasingly demands protection for civilians in Gaza, Israel is under pressure to demonstrate that the hospital – and the tunnel network it says it hid – were military targets important enough to warrant the enormous cost of Palestinian lives. to justify.
To enter Gaza, two reporters and a photographer from The New York Times were required to remain with Israeli forces during the visit. They agreed not to photograph most soldiers’ faces, landmarks, maps, and certain details of weapons. The Times did not allow the Israeli military to screen its reporting before publication.
Times journalists were allowed to see only part of the sprawling Al-Shifa complex. The military refused to let journalists tour the hospital, or see or interview patients and medical staff staying at the facility, saying it was not fully secured and that Hamas fighters may still be there.
Before the Israeli attack on Al-Shifa, the World Health Organization said it was no longer a functional hospital. Officials described desperate conditions: food, medicine and anesthetics were virtually gone, and generators and life-saving equipment were turned off due to a lack of fuel. About three dozen premature babies were particularly at risk, they said.
Colonel Tsury said the military had delivered food, supplies and medical equipment to patients and doctors, a claim that could not immediately be verified.
It is not entirely clear how extensive the damage is to the hospital. But the main emergency building appeared intact, with electricity, after a days-long siege that health officials said had led to increasingly dire conditions.
During The Times’ visit, gunfire rang out nearby, giving the impression of ongoing gun battles on nearby streets. To enter the hospital grounds, special forces officers escorted journalists through the bombed-out remains of a building on the edge of the site; they said it was too dangerous to go through the main gate.
Outside the hospital, the scale of the destruction had left parts of Gaza unrecognizable. Parts of the city’s boulevard had been razed to the ground, apartment buildings had been hollowed out by shelling and others had been flattened by airstrikes. The constant tanker traffic had also turned the main coastal road into a bumpy dirt road.