Gaza’s hospitals have emerged as a focal point in Israel’s war with Hamas, with each side citing how the other has pulled the facilities into the conflict as proof of the enemy’s disregard for the safety of civilians.
In four months of war, Israeli troops have entered several hospitals, including the Qatari Hospital, Kamal Adwan Hospital and Al-Rantisi Specialized Hospital for Children, to search for weapons and fighters. But Al-Shifa Hospital has taken on particular significance because it is Gaza’s largest medical facility, and because of Israel’s high-profile claims that Hamas leaders operated a command-and-control center beneath it. Hamas and the hospital’s staff, meanwhile, insisted it was only a medical center.
This is simply not true when IHL is looked at as a whole.
Hospitals do receive special protections. As a rule a hospital can never be attacked unless it becomes co-opted for military purposes or represents a legitimate military objective. At that point, the hospital must be notified prior to attack if doing so is at all reasonable. Further, all proportionality calculations must still be made regarding collateral damage.
The hospital became a legitimate target when Hamas militants, under military orders, brought in hostages.
Notifying the hospital was clearly unreasonable, as that would allow Hamas to remove the hostages, the recovery of which was the primary military objective.
Proportionality considerations dictated what was a reasonable attack. Israel didn’t bomb the building into dust - they staged a controlled siege (to prevent the hostages from being moved) followed by a methodical taking of the facility.
Nothing about this was unreasonable or illegal given the full context.
That’s the IDF excuse, not the actual law.
You mean the ones the IDF clearly never bother with? Just yesterday, they killed 95 people, most of them civilians, to free 2 hostages.
First of all, that’s flat out false. Second, it hasn’t even been proven that it was the case. All we have is the word of the notoriously deceptive IDF.
Wrong again, genocide denier.
Hostages who, if they were even there, were there for treatment?
If you still believe that one, I have a pristine palace in Gaza to sell you…
No. How many times are you going to be just confidently objectively wrong in one reply? Are you going for the record or something?
Did you get that bullshit verbatim from the IDF press release?
Literally everything about it was. You should be ashamed of yourself.