Raiding Shifa Hospital will not get Israel closer to Hamas

Israel has some nerve to talk about civilisation when it is bombing hospitals across Gaza and killing innocent civilians in a deadly war.

The last casualty is Al Shifa. After imposing a five-day siege on it, Israeli soldiers, armed with tanks and drones, decided to raid the hospital in the middle of the night and in one full-swoop insidiously take it over.

At once, the Israeli soldiers blew up its gates, surrounded its courtyards with tanks and snipers and then made their onslaught on the hospital complex through its surgery and emergency department, and began shooting at first to make sure there is no armed resistance and then died down in a checkered way. 

Soldiers everywhere

Once inside, the soldiers only found patients, nurses and doctors, as well as displaced persons who had been flocking to hospitals soon after October 7, when the war on Gaza began. There were no armed gunmen here, an image that Israel has been trying to sell to the world.

Like others, Al Shifa hospital came to house thousands of internal refugees, whose homes were bombed by the Israelis. They come mostly from the north, which Israeli warplanes had begun bombing earnestly and with vengeance since the start of the war.

At first, the soldiers wanted the medical staff to leave the hospital but the doctors and nurses firmly refused, saying they need to stay with their patients who may die if they do not. With electricity cut off, these patients had to be kept alive manually, especially like those who are on respirators.

The hospital has 650 patients, 32 are in critical condition in the ICU and 36 babies in incubators, two of them had died because the electricity went off. The hospital is trying its best to keep the rest alive through keeping them in warm places.

Soon after, the soldiers began a comb-search of the hospital starting from the basement, and when doors were locked, they were blown up. There was no taking of chances. They are looking for the so-called Hamas command centre, but instead found patients and displaced people, sprawling in dark corridors and dormitories.

No Hamas here!

There were no Hamas men here as the Netanyahu government had been saying for the last two weeks when Israeli land incursions into Gaza started. The White House as well had come to parrot what the Israeli government and army was saying. But it has become a rather silly view because Hamas operatives would not place themselves as “sitting ducks” even if they thought of using hospitals, especially after 43 days of constant bombing by Israeli warplanes.

As the hours pass with the latest military onslaught that started just after midnight Wednesday, and with Israel saying this military action on the hospital is essential and with US backing, the White House now faces a major diplomatic embarrassment because nothing has so far been found.

There is no wrongful activity, here, just doctors and staff trying to do the best of a bad situation as well as patients, whose treatment has long become ineffective because Al Shifa has already been depleted from its medical necessities.

But Israelis continue to insist they are right, showing in a way their desire to find Hamas operatives have gone beyond the pale, including make civilians suffer. After 12 hours, they are still comb-searching the hospital, starting from the basement and looking for the terror secrets.

Beyond the pale

The hospital is a complex of around six buildings. It was a model of medical practice, the best in the Gaza Strip among its other 35 hospitals and even the West Bank. Now, the Israelis are taking it apart brick-by-brick. The soldiers will probably take their time in fulfilling a mission that is likely to be a waste of time.

They say they are looking for “specific” things whatever that means.

They are now in the kidney dialysis department, but all they see are patients in a life and death situation, trying to beat their time and have their machines switched back on. Like the thousands, currently in the hospital they are tired and hungry, more like starving since they had not had a bite to eat for the last five days. 

The hospital has not even morsels of food, nor leftover crumbs. Injured patients lie on the floor shouting; there are no painkillers here, the hospital has run out of them. There is no drinking water since its reservoir had long been bombed, thanks to the Israeli soldiers who are striking anything that moves, feeling trigger-happy that at long last they caught their worst enemy, Hamas fighters.

Inside Al Shifa Hospital, and during the search, there are reports that the Israelis have blown up a warehouse of pharmaceutical and medical equipment. And there is likely to be more explosives inside the hospital in the search of those illusive beings.

The hospital is occasionally fired upon by snipers, warning the sick, elderly, women and children to stay away from the windows or else there will be hell to pay! Meanwhile, down the courtyard, young people were assembled, coming through after loudspeakers, no doubt to be interrogated with their fate in the balance.

Everyone at Al Shifa complex awaits. With communication cut off, mobiles and Internet offline, many feel there could still be a bloodbath. After all who is going to stop the Israeli army? 

Hamas are not fighting in hospitals, they are up north along the border with Israel, east of the Strip and/or in involved in some urban skirmish. With this in mind, it becomes: God help the people in Al Shifa or in any other hospitals which are also being targeted regularly. 

Marwan Asmar is a journalist based in Amman