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Palestinians react as they inspect damages at Al Shifa Hospital after Israeli forces withdrew from the Hospital and the area around it following a two-week operation, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City April 1, 2024.
Israel’s Shifa raid ends. Is Rafah next?
The Israeli military on Monday confirmed its withdrawal from Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest health facility, concluding a raid that lasted roughly two weeks and sparked criticism from the WHO and international rights groups.
Israel says the raid, which reportedly left the hospital in ruins, destroyed a terrorist base and may have garnered intel that could help locate hostages held by Hamas since Oct. 7, 2023. Israel’s war tactics are increasingly being scrutinized globally, including by the US – the Jewish State’s top ally.
At home, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a serious domestic backlash over his handling of the war. Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets over the weekend to call for his removal and a hostage deal. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s coalition is threatened by divisions over conscription exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Is Rafah next? Netanyahu pushed back against critics on Sunday, noting that he has done all he can to secure the release of the Israeli hostages – and saying that Rafah remains in his sights.
The US and Israel held a virtual meeting Monday on alternatives to invading Rafah, but few expect Netanyahu – who has said there will be “no victory” without entering Rafah – to change course.
Busy Bibi: On Monday, Netanyahu also announced he would temporarily shut down Al Jazeera in Israel, referring to it as a “terror channel” and accusing the Doha-based outlet of participating in the Oct. 7 attacks. In yet another sign of the growing rift between the US and Israel, the White House said: "A move like this is concerning.”
An opening to a tunnel that, according to Israel's military, was used by Palestinian militants under Al Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip as seen in this screen grab taken from a handout video released by the Israel Defense Forces on November 19, 2023
The controversy around, and under, Al Shifa Hospital
It’s been a week since Israeli forces seized control of Al Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in the Gaza Strip, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of patients and staff.
The IDF has said the complex sits atop a vast network of tunnels and bunkers – some of them built by Israel when it still occupied Gaza in the 1980s – which Hamas uses as an underground command center. Prior to raiding the hospital, the Israelis released a 3D rendering of what they think is underneath it.
In the days since, the IDF claims to have found evidence of a Hamas presence at the complex: a video that appears to show small arms cached in an MRI center, at least one tunnel, and security camera footage that appears to show at least two of the Oct. 7 hostages being taken into the hospital. None of the footage has been independently verified.
The controversy. The question of what is or is not at Al Shifa has echoed wider clashes over the war. The Israeli government is keen to prove that Hamas has used hospitals and other civilian facilities for significant military purposes. Critics of Israel’s siege and invasion of Gaza, meanwhile, say that forcing patients out of the hospital and seizing it without military justification reflects a broader pattern of IDF disregard for civilian casualties in Gaza.
What do the laws of war say? Combatants can, in fact, attack a school or a hospital, provided there is credible evidence that it is being used to harm the enemy directly, explains Sari Bashi, program director at Human Rights Watch.
But critically, the law also says that any response must be – and this is the grayish zone – “proportionate.” It is not “proportionate,” for example, to destroy a crowded elementary school in order to kill a single sniper positioned on the roof. But depending on how many people the sniper has killed or put in danger, it could be proportionate to target the sniper specifically, even if that meant killing or wounding some students in the process.
For hospitals, Bashi notes, the standards of protection are even higher – after all, even small damage to a hospital can affect the provision of medical services for the wider population.
What’s more, an occupying power immediately has the responsibility to ensure the continued smooth functioning of the hospital. “That’s not what happened,” says Bashi, who points out that even after the IDF took over Al Shifa, there were further evacuations of doctors and patients.
So is the evidence that Israel has shown sufficient? Not yet, says Ilia Utmelidze, director of the Case Matrix Network, a nonprofit that assists governments with war crimes investigations. But he cautions that “these things take time.” Social media is not going to be the place where serious investigative work of this kind gets done.
Still, without a credible international investigation – which the IDF has so far not allowed as it continues to search the complex itself – there may be little evidence of value either way.
One thing to remember. Humanitarian law and the laws of war are imperfect. After all, they are a body of rules developed largely by militaries in the late 1940s to regulate the making of war rather than to prevent conflict altogether. As such, they often permit a wider range of violence and killing than people are comfortable with.
“Unfortunately, humanitarian law is not,” Utmelidze says, “as humane as we would like it to be.”
Premature newborns receive treatment after being transferred from Al-Shifa Hospital to Al-Emarati Hospital in Rafah.
Hard Numbers: Gaza newborns evacuated, Old Joe keeps a low pro, Shakira shakes tax rap, Bolsonaro’s whale of a harassment charge, a long overdue story from Minnesota
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