The Shifa Hospital area in Gaza has become the center of combat and the focus of accusations between Israel and the fundamentalist group Hamas in a war that this Saturday marked five intense weeks of projectiles and bombs. While the UN warns about a dramatic health situation in the Palestinian enclave and demands a ceasefire to save patients, wounded and displaced people, thousands of inhabitants of the northern Gaza Strip continue making their way south in the “humanitarian pause” of Israel that could become a “humanitarian truce” if there is an agreement on the issue of those kidnapped by Hamas on October 7.
Without his return there will be no truce, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned again. In a long press conference on Saturday night, he added that his forces killed “thousands of terrorists,” highlighting that Hamas has already lost control of the northern Gaza Strip, accusing it of shooting at humanitarian corridors for Gazans. “If we want peace, security and guarantee the future of Israel, we must destroy Hamas,” he declared, warning the Lebanese militia Hizbula that if it decides to intervene in the war with Hamas “it will make the mistake of its life and will change the destiny of Lebanon.” .
After denouncing “the attack and siege” by Israel against several hospitals, the Ministry of Health controlled by the Islamist group warned this Saturday of the risk to the lives of 37 newborn babies in the neonatal unit of the Shifa Hospital after being “out of service.” ” while an Israeli NGO noted that two died due to the lack of electricity. “The intensive care unit, the pediatric department and the oxygen devices stopped working,” said Health Ministry spokesperson Dr. Ashraf al-Qidra while director general Munir Al Bursh denounced that “Shifa is “under siege in all directions. The occupation surrounds it and prevents the evacuation of the wounded.”
The director of Shifa Hospital, Mohamed Abu Selmia, said that Israel demanded that they evacuate the hospital, but that there was nowhere for such a large number of patients to go. According to him, his center “has been left without water, fuel, food, electricity and telecommunications, with thousands of people inside, including wounded, patients and displaced people.”
The Israeli Army denies the accusations. In Arabic, Colonel Moshe Tetro denies that his forces have fired on Shifa Hospital and confirms in its surroundings “armed clashes between soldiers and terrorists” while informing Gazans that “the east side of the hospital” remains open to whoever wants go out.
Israel – its spokespersons recall – has been asking for weeks for the evacuation of hospitals to safer places to “be able to confront the terrorists” by denouncing that the armed wing of Hamas uses Shifa and the rest of Gaza’s health centers to hide underground. and launch armed attacks. In this way, they warn of a future that may not be very distant, turning Shifa into a “legitimate military objective.” For the first time, Israeli sources do not rule out the possibility that some kidnapped people held by Hamas are in the basement of Gaza’s main hospital.
The Army announced that they killed dozens of militiamen in the last day. Among them, Ahmed Siam, commander of the Naser Radwan company, whom he accused of “keeping approximately 1,000 Gaza residents hostage in the Rantisi Hospital, preventing them from evacuating to the south.” According to the military organization, he “died at the Al Buraq school along with several other terrorists who were under his command and were hiding in the school.” Hours earlier, the Ministry of Health had reported that the Israeli attack on that center had caused 50 deaths.
Four reservist soldiers died this Saturday due to the explosion of a tunnel located near a mosque in the northern Gaza Strip. In statements to foreign media, an officer from the Guivati Brigade in Gaza denounced the “presence of terrorists and Hamas tunnels in clinics, schools and mosques.” According to him, his forces surrounded the Rantisi Hospital after requesting its evacuation, noting that they saw militiamen camouflaged among the civilians who came out. Hamas, for its part, denounced this Saturday “a ring of fire around the Indonesian Hospital.”
International NGOs and the UN warned of the effects of the siege and attacks in areas of the Shifa, Rantisi and Naser hospitals beyond the lack of fuel entry. World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Margaret Harris said the attack on Naser forced the closure of the children’s hospital, the only specialized pediatric care hospital left in northern Gaza, while Doctors Without Borders added: ” “We denounce the death sentence of civilians trapped in the Shifa hospital signed by the Israeli Army. An urgent and unconditional ceasefire is necessary for all warring parties. Humanitarian aid must be provided to the entire Gaza Strip now.”
“Overwhelmed, running on short supplies and increasingly insecure, Gaza’s health system has reached a point of no return, endangering the lives of thousands of wounded, sick and displaced people,” said the International Committee of the Red Cross. (ICRC).
An Israeli government spokesman, Eylon Levy, said he regretted that the WHO and the UNWRA (UN agency for Palestinian refugees) had not expressed “their indignation against the Hamas headquarters in the basement of Shifa Hospital or that they had committed to moving civilians to safety.
Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians left through the two corridors (Salah A Din Highway and coastal road) from Israel, which this Saturday extended the humanitarian pause from four to seven hours. In any case, it is an exodus of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip that will take a long time to rebuild their buildings destroyed by bombs. Cameras captured an Israeli soldier shouting in Hebrew to the row of displaced people on the Salah A Din road: “If someone speaks Hebrew, it’s time, don’t be afraid and come running here.” Words born of fear or perhaps hope that Hamas troops have taken advantage of the mass departure to flee with some of the 239 kidnapped people. In this sense, Israel launched leaflets in Arabic with a financial offer in exchange for information on the whereabouts of the hostages. At the expense of a rescue mission that is very difficult in a strip full of tunnels, his release goes through negotiations led by Qatar, godfather of Hamas, Egypt, a transcendent neighbor and gateway to Gaza, and the United States.
As the Israeli ground incursion into northern Gaza progresses, Hamas has reduced its missile launch capacity. Hamas and the rest of the armed groups have launched more than 9,500 projectiles against southern Israel (12% failed in Gaza, according to Israeli data). Among them, 3,000 in just a few hours on October 7. In its messages, the armed wing of Hamas affirms that it has an arsenal for a long time and announces that they have destroyed 160 armed military vehicles since the beginning of the ground operation.