Palestine Tet – 30 – The Israeli Demolition of Gaza’s Shifa Hospital Complex
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(This article is taken from Rai Al Youm, Palestinian news source on November 16, 2023. Originally in Arabic, it was translated into English using Google Translate. RJP)
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As of Wednesday evening, November 15, 2023. For 41 days, the Israeli army has been waging a devastating war on Gaza, leaving 11,500 martyrs, including 4,710 children and 3,160 women, in addition to 29,800 injured, 70 percent of whom are children and women, in addition to 197 martyrs in the West Bank and about 2,700 wounded, according to official Palestinian sources. Wednesday evening.
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The Israeli army continues to search the Shifa complex in the Gaza Strip and destroy entire medical departments after failing to find any resistance bases there.
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It is now 24 hours since Israel invaded al Shifa hospital. No sprawling Hamas command-and-control center. No arms caches in the tunnels. No secret passageways. Nothing except: DEAD BABIES IN INCUBATORS WITHOUT FUEL.
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Gaza Strip (Palestinian Territories) – (AFP) – On Thursday, the Israeli army searched the Al-Shifa Hospital complex in the Gaza Strip, which consists of several buildings, “in a delicate operation,” while Hamas said that the army “destroyed” medical departments in the hospital.
Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, has become the focus of the military operation carried out by Israel. It says that Hamas is using the hospital as a command center, which the Islamic movement denies.
An Israeli army official announced on Thursday that video clips related to the hostages held by Hamas were found on computers in Al-Shifa Hospital. According to the official, the army is searching “every floor while hundreds of patients and medical staff remain in the complex.” He added, “During the inspection process, information and video footage related to the hostages kidnapped from Israel were found on computers, in addition to technological equipment.”
On Thursday evening (November 16, 2023), the army announced that the body of a woman kidnapped from Kibbutz Be’eri had been found. “Israeli army forces removed her from a building adjacent to Al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip and transported to Israeli territory.”
Spokesman Daniel Hagari said, “Yehudit (Weiss) was killed by terrorists in the Gaza Strip, and we were not able to reach her in time.”
For his part, Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’s political bureau abroad, said in a televised speech, “Our people and their valiant resistance have thwarted the enemy’s goals and plans to displace or recover prisoners by force… He will not be able to achieve any of his goals or recover his prisoners except by paying the price determined by the resistance.”
A journalist cooperating with Agence France-Presse confirmed that “hundreds of soldiers stormed the hospital and surrounded all the buildings and prevented anyone from leaving… Bulldozers demolished the hospital’s southern walls and dozens of vehicles.”
The Hamas Ministry of Health, through its spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra, said in a statement: “The Israeli army stormed the hospital and destroyed many departments.” He destroyed the radiology department and bombed the burns and kidney department.” He pointed out that the Israeli forces are “investigating the doctors, the injured, and the displaced.”
The United Nations estimated the number of people in the hospital at about 2,300, including patients, employees and displaced people, who took shelter in the hospital before the army stormed it. According to Al-Qidra, “thousands of women, children, sick and injured are threatened with death from hunger and from Israeli bombing.”
Haniyeh stressed that the Israeli army “is waging a war on hospitals in Gaza in violation of all human norms, charters and values, the most recent of which was the brutal attack and is still ongoing on the Al-Shifa Medical Complex, based on the lies it fabricated and seeks to market, which have been proven false.”
Hamas launched an unprecedented attack in the history of the Hebrew state on Israeli territory on October 7. The attack left 1,200 dead, most of them civilians who died on the first day of the attack, according to the Israeli authorities. Also, Hamas kidnapped about 240 people, including foreigners, and transported them to the Gaza Strip, according to the same source.
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In response, Israel vowed to “eliminate” Hamas. Since then, it has been relentlessly bombing the Gaza Strip and imposing an “absolute siege” on it, and ground operations began as of October 27. The bombing led to the death of more than 11,500 people, most of them civilians and including thousands of children, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
Israel has essentially imposed a land, sea and air blockade on the Gaza Strip since Hamas took power there in 2007. The Israeli army announced on Thursday that the number of soldiers killed in battles with Hamas inside Gaza had risen to 51.
For its part, the Palestinian Red Crescent Ambulance Society confirmed that Israeli tanks were surrounding the Arab National Hospital (Al-Baptist) in Gaza amid a “violent attack” at a time when the Hebrew state insists that Hamas is using the health facilities as its bases.
The association said in a statement on its account on the X platform, “The Red Crescent ambulance crews are unable to move to reach the injured and wounded.”
– “Immediate possibility of starvation” –
Concerns are rising about the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip as Israel continues to cut off water, electricity, fuel and food supplies. The World Food Program warned Thursday that residents face “the immediate possibility of starvation” in the Gaza Strip, where “food and water supplies have become practically non-existent.”
The Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) announced on Thursday that communications had been “completely cut off” again with the Gaza Strip. During a press conference in Geneva after he informed the member states of the United Nations about the situation in Gaza, Philippe Lazzarini said, “I believe that there is a deliberate attempt to stifle our operations and paralyze the operations of UNRWA.”
He added that “the Gaza Strip is once again suffering from a complete communications blackout… due to the lack of fuel.”
At the same time, the Palestinian Telecommunications Company “Paltel” said on its Facebook page, “We regret to announce a complete interruption of communications services (fixed, cellular, and Internet) in the Gaza Strip, after preventing the entry of fuel and exhausting all backup energy sources to operate the main network elements.”
The Israeli authorities consider fuel to be a high-risk dual-use product: civilian and military, and believe that it benefits Hamas.
Since the outbreak of fighting, limited shipments of food have entered through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Wednesday also recorded the entry of the first truck transporting fuel.
“We need fuel, fuel, fuel,” the UNRWA Commissioner-General stressed, adding that the longer the siege on Gaza lasts, the greater the threat that it will become “the main cause of death” in the Palestinian Strip.
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