Destroying Hamas

The IDF says its forces are continuing their search of Al-Shifa hospital   BBC

 

"We are starting small, and the operation will expand as necessary."

"The decision was that we enter Al Shifa only if we know exactly what is there and where it is, as we did at Rantisi Hospital, which was only [raided] when we knew exactly what was in its basement."

Israeli security official

"We have information that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al Shifa, and tunnels underneath them to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages."

"That is a war crime."

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby

An IDF soldier with medical supplies at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in a handout photo distributed on November 15, 2023 (Israel Defense Forces)

 

Searching for traces of Hamas within and under the Al Shifa Hospital, Israeli troops swooped into the facility in what the IDF called a "targeted operation". The search was launched around 2:00 a.m. and Israeli forces remained on site for over 15 hours. Before entering the complex, soldiers came under attack, encountering explosive devices and terrorist cells. The IDF forces during the clashes killed Hamas terrorists, but no soldiers were injured.

According to the Israeli military, it was engaged in carrying out a "precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the hospital", separate from the location of any patients and hospital medical staff. Under the informed realization that the hospital had been transformed into a Hamas command base, where patients, staff and civilians shelter to provide cover for its operatives, the Israeli forces entered with caution.

An announcement from the White House revealed that a "variety" of U.S. intelligence sources had confirmed Hamas is making use of Al Shifa along with other medical centres in the Gaza Strip, to plan and execute its terror operations. According to the IDF, weapons and Hamas materiels were discovered inside the hospital. It is believed that some of the over 240 hostages taken into Gaza by Hamas terrorists during the October 7 massacre, could be held under Al Shifa. In the event, the body of one of the hostages was found close by the hospital.

As the Israeli soldiers entered the  hospital they were accompanied by medical teams bringing with them incubators and cartons carrying baby food and medical supplies. Munir al-Boursh, a senior Gaza Health Ministry official, had his own version of the event, claiming that Israeli forces ransacked the basement and outbuildings including those used for the emergency and surgery departments. Yet another official claimed troops had removed displaced familiies sheltering in the hospital basement.

Most of the Palestinians who had taken to sheltering at the hospital had departed in recent days. Yet several thousand were said to have remained, along with patients -- including premature babies at risk of survival with no power available for incubators. The energy supplies were being drained by Hamas for use in their tunnels to provide air, light and heat, along with propulsion for their never-ending rockets blasting off toward Israel.

In their resolve to destroy the Hamas  terrorist infrastructure, their command posts, their operatives, to render them inoperatively no longer a threat to Israelis through their constant rocket bombardments and suicide attacks, much less the most recent bloodbath that took the lives of 1,200 mostly civilian Israelis, including women, children and infants, and the violent abduction of 240 men, women and children, along with the mass rape of girls and women in southern Israel, Israeli troops extended control across northern Gaza.

In the process taking possession of the territory's legislature building and police headquarters, on the way to emasculating the terrorist groups in perpetuity.