Fears for hospitals are raised by fighting in Gaza City
The destruction of civilian buildings in the Gaza Strip by Hamas during the Second and Fourth-Generation Israeli Air-Strike Wars
But as Hamas rocket attacks continue, and artillery shelling and small-arms fire intensifies within the territory, determining the source of the damage detected by satellite imagery becomes increasingly difficult.
In response, Israel’s military has launched near-continuous airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, killing over 10,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and displacing nearly 1.5 million people, according to United Nations figures.
An estimated 27% to 30% of all buildings in the north have likely been damaged since the war started, according to an analysis by Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University. Throughout the Gaza Strip, they estimate that between 13% and 18% of all structures have been destroyed or damaged, a range of 38,000 to 51,500 buildings.
Van Den Hoek, an expert in satellite imagery, has been studying this imagery since the war started. “There’s broad damage in areas where people live — cities, refugee camps.”
The narrow section of land between the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt and Israel is known as the Gaza Strip. Its footprint is roughly equal to that of the city of Philadelphia, but with a half million more people, many packed into concrete high-rises in tight cities up and down the coast.
Hospitals in the north of Gaza have been ordered to evacuate and they have been accused of being used as human shields by Hamas. Israel has struck sites including apartment buildings, mosques and markets, calling them legitimate targets used by Hamas’s military wing.
Nevertheless, bombing raids have intensified throughout the Gaza Strip, especially in the north where the Israeli military has surrounded Gaza City. The Israeli military says that it is fighting to destroy Hamas so it can no longer attack Israelis. Israel, the United States and the European Union have long designated Hamas a terrorist organization.
An Israeli airstrike hit a refugee camp north of Gaza City. There are news reports of subsequent deadly strikes at Jabalia, which is Gaza’s largest refugee camp. The attacks were blamed on Israel and said to have killed many Hamas commanders. The Health Ministry in Gaza said at least 195 people were killed.
There was at least one projectile hit inside the Al Shifa complex, but the source and extent of the damage were not immediately clear. The Israeli military says that the projectile that struck the hospital complex was fired at the troops. The hospital was hit by several missiles on Friday, but the director said it was because of Israel.
Civilian Hospitals may in no circumstances be the object of attack, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the parties to the conflict, according to the 1949Geneva Conventions.
The Israeli government has accused Hamas of its headquarters under a hospital. The militant group acknowledges building a vast tunnel network, and is believed to be operating underground in and around sensitive civilian sites.
Pnina Sharvit Baruch is an Israeli lawyer who served as a top legal adviser on military operations.
It is possible that Israel refrains from attacking this military infrastructure because civilians could be killed. Or Israel does attack. Civilians get killed and the whole world puts pressure on Israel,” said Sharvit Baruch, now with the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
“The Israeli military has been launching explosive weapons in densely crowded city blocks, causing tremendous civilian harm. That’s predictable,” Bashi said.
Israeli troops and civilians in the wake of the Shifa hospital attack on Oct. 17, 2001: Human Rights Watch says the Israeli military is not accepting the rules of war
The international rules of warfare states that “medics can’t be used to try to shield military objectives from attack.”
And any retaliation would have to be proportionate. Lawyers said that an army wouldn’t have the right to destroy the entire building because a lone man from a hospital was firing at the building.
During times of relative calm, Israeli commanders would use the years that Sharvit Baruch worked with them to put together target lists.
The first was an Oct. 17 explosion in the parking lot of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. Palestinians said several hundreds were killed and blamed an Israeli airstrike. Israel denied involvement, saying the cause was an errant rocket fired by Palestinian militants. Evidence pointed to a Palestinian rocket as the culprit, according to U.S. and other intelligence agencies.
At least some of the casualties were among the thousands of Palestinians who are camping out on the grounds of Shifa and other hospitals, hoping they will provide at least a bit more safety than other places in Gaza, a territory under almost round-the-clock bombardment.
Human Rights Watch is looking into the Shifah hospital attack, as Israel said the Hamas fighters were leaving the hospital, not attacking from it. She also said that Israel gave no warning it was striking.
“These are the kinds of rules that all the nations in the world have agreed to,” she said. ” The Israeli military is not accepting those rules even on its own statements.”
In addition, Hamas has always targeted Israeli civilians, from scores of suicide bombings in the 1990s and early 2000s, to its Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel.
The group holds a lot of hostages, most of them civilians, and has been firing rockets at Israeli cities for the past month.
Videos verified by The Times showed a projectile flying into the courtyard of a hospital and hitting a building where displaced Palestinians were resting.
An Israeli official said that the military was closing in on hospitals in Gaza City on Friday as the battle with Hamas became more violent, and that vulnerable patients and civilians with nowhere to flee could be harmed.
The hospitals are sensitive. The spokesman for the Israeli military, Richard Hecht, told reporters that they were closing in on them.
He said that if Hamas fire on hospitals, Israeli forces will do what is necessary. He also said that Israeli troops were “closing in” on Hamas in northern Gaza.
He said that operation rooms and intensive care units were at full capacity and that frustrated doctors and nurses had been forced to leave dozens of seriously wounded people.
“If conditions were better than this, we could have saved their lives,” Dr. Abu Salmiya said. From the hospital, he said, armed clashes and powerful explosions could be heard.
Doctors at Al Shifa have faced dire conditions , treating a growing number of patients even as medical supplies and fuel needed to power generators have dwindled.
The wounded will receive just the bare minimum of assistance, says Dr. Abu Salmiya. “There are people who need complex operations, but we can’t provide them, because we simply don’t have the capacity or the medication.”
The Al Shifa Hospital: Planning for an Israeli Ground Raid into Hamas Bases and the Interior of the Complex, Dr. Abu Salmiya
Hamas officials and Al Shifa administrators have denied the accusations. If an international organization could find evidence of Hamas there, they should investigate the site.
Inside the Al Shifa hospital itself, staff members were preparing for the worst, including a potential Israeli ground raid into the hospital, Dr. Abu Salmiya said. He said that they don’t have plans to completely evacuate the complex.
The Israeli military said it is “closely monitoring” hospitals in Gaza amid fighting between the Palestinian militant group Hamas and the Israeli military. This comes after an Israeli hospital suffered damage during an attack by Hamas. The hospital was damaged during a clash between Israel’s troops and Hamas in Gaza on Thursday, officials said.