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Satellite pics show Israeli Defence Force’s operation against Gaza’s Dar Al-Shifa hospital

Satellite photos reveal Israeli has amassed an army of tanks outside Gaza’s biggest hospital - as they launch a “precise” operation against Hamas.

Jamie SeidelJamie Seidel
@JamieSeidel
6 min read
November 15, 2023 - 11:51AM
Satellite images show tanks gathered outside the hospital (left) and buildings on fire in Gaza City (right). Picture: Planet Labs
Satellite images show tanks gathered outside the hospital (left) and buildings on fire in Gaza City (right). Picture: Planet Labs

Israeli tanks are poised outside Gaza’s largest hospital with reports the military has already entered some buildings.

Satellite photos taken in the past few hours reveal the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has amassed a formation of tanks and armoured vehicles around the perimeter of Dar Al-Shifa Hospital, which is the largest medical complex and emergency hospital in the Gaza Strip.

Israel claims the hospital is also the command post for the Palestinian Hamas’ terrorist wing, hidden underground beneath thousands of ailing and sheltering civilians.

Further assemblies of tanks and armour can be seen within rubble fortifications bulldozed into the suburbs a few hundred metres from the hospital.

The director of the Al Shifa Hospital has told Palestinian media that his staff and patients are attempting to shelter in hallways with the sound of heavy gunfire coming from the streets outside.

Palestinian health minister Mai Al-Kaila accused Israel of committing “crimes against humanity” at the hospital.

Reports from inside say staff and patients have been told to take cover and stay away from windows, while medical procedures are taking place without anaesthetic.

“There are bodies littered in the hospital complex and there is no longer electricity at the morgues,” said hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiya.

“We were forced to bury them in a mass grave,” he added, estimating that 179 bodies had been interred so far, including seven newborns who died when their incubators lost power.

After warnings from the United States and others that the Al-Shifa hospital must be protected, the IDF said in the early hours that they had entered the compound in Gaza City.

“Based on intelligence information and an operational necessity, IDF forces are carrying out a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital,” the military said in a statement.

The United Nations estimates that at least 2,300 patients, staff and displaced civilians are inside the facility, trapped by days of fierce fighting and aerial bombardments.

Ongoing attempts to evacuate the hospital have been abandoned amid heavy fighting in the surrounding suburbs.

“The occupation (IDF) officially informed us of its intention to storm the Shifa complex in the coming minutes,” a Ministry of Health in Gaza statement adds.

Subsequent reports say tanks have since forced their way through to the hospital’s main courtyard - where many refugees are camped - as commandos stormed the hospital from multiple directions.

Israel’s ultimatum

A spokesman for the Israeli government confirmed it had made an ultimatum.

“The IDF calls on Hamas terrorists hiding under Shifa Hospital to surrender,” says Eylon Levy.

“We have given enough warning. Its protected status under international law has lapsed, and we are fully within our rights to counter Hamas’ belligerent military activities.”

The military says its attack complies with the laws of war.

“That’s what we’re doing by sending our forces in with specially trained medical teams and Arabic speakers, after trying to facilitate an evacuation for A MONTH and giving Hamas time to surrender. We know what our obligations are. We know our rights.”

In a later statement on X, Mr Levy said the IDF would “destroy all of Hamas’ terror and governing infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.”

“Our duty of self defense means eliminating the terror group that did that, so that it can never perpetrate the same atrocities again.”

Satellite images show tanks gathered outside the hospital (left) and buildings on fire in Gaza City (right). Picture: Planet Labs
Satellite images show tanks gathered outside the hospital (left) and buildings on fire in Gaza City (right). Picture: Planet Labs

Israel’s surgical strikes

The hospital has been under siege for four days, with no electricity or water supplies getting through to its patients. Its last stocks of medical supplies reportedly ran out after attempts to deliver fresh supplies were halted due to the bombing of an ambulance convoy.

The US Pentagon came out overnight supporting Israel’s allegations.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told media that “a variety of intelligence sourcing” had confirmed “Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad used some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and support their military operations and to hold hostages.”

He called such use of hospitals “a war crime.”

“If true, this would endanger civilians and violate the laws of war,” Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

“It would not, however, give the Israeli military free rein to do anything it wanted against the hospital.”

Israel has been calling for Gaza City hospitals to shut down and evacuate for several weeks. But the bombing of ambulances and medical convoys, along with ongoing fighting in the streets, has led many medical personnel to refuse to do so.

The IDF has denied being responsible for a series of projectile hits on the hospital in recent days.

But the heavy use of tank artillery and large but low precision 500kg and 1-tonne bombs has significantly increased the risk of “collateral damage” in built-up areas.

Appeal for sanctuary

The outcome of the battle for Dar Al-Shifa Hospital will be crucial in the campaign against Hamas terrorists, but also for Israel’s standing as a participant in a rules-based world order.

The Geneva Conventions, created after the horrors of World War II, the Nazi Holocaust and Imperial Japan’s brutality against military and civilians alike, established hospitals as sanctuaries of the highest order. And that the safety of patients over-rules all other considerations.

Israel committed its professional fighting force, the IDF, to the authority of the Geneva Conventions in 1951, after the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.

Hamas militants are members of a proscribed terrorist organisation because it has been found to deliberately target civilians to reach its political and military objectives.

“We do not want to see a firefight in a hospital where innocent people, helpless people, sick people are simply trying to get the medical care that they deserve,” Kirby said after supporting Israel’s allegations. “As we have been clear on multiple occasions, Hamas’s actions do not lessen Israel’s responsibilities to protect civilians in Gaza.”

The WHO’s Ghebreyesus said in a statement that his organisation had managed to contact health practitioners in the facility yesterday.

“Regrettably, the hospital is not functioning as a hospital anymore,” he said.

He claimed hospitals can be assaulted if they are demonstrably being used to “commit acts harmful to the enemy”.

But, even then, only the highest standards - similar to those aimed at preventing police from shooting hostages to kill a hostage-taker - must be enforced.

Laws of war

Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) analyst Nathan Ruser says it is the role of professional armies to “take on risk to protect civilians”.

“It’s abundantly clear that to the IDF, there’s no civilian price too high to pay for anything that even slightly reduces risk for any IDF soldier,” he tweeted this morning.

“This is inherently a massive problem and is leading to immeasurable civilian suffering and death.”

WHO’s Ghebreyesus stresses the importance of a “clear warning” before a major attack.

“Such warnings should be clear and cannot be issued for the purpose of disrupting the functioning of the hospital or forcing an evacuation.”

“There is no reliably safe route to evacuate,” says Ghebreyesus. “Satellite imagery confirms fires, military operations, and roadblocks on every conceivable route. And many sick and injured people in the hospital wouldn’t be able to evacuate even if the roads were clear.”

And he says Hamas’ illegal behaviour does not entitle Israel to the same behaviour. “The most critical legal point right now: people unable to leave the hospital still have protections under the laws of war against indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks.”

Ruser says the Hamas terrorist group has undeniably built up an infrastructure network exploiting Gazan civilians as human shields. And this is a clear war crime.

“That makes any operation into Gaza inherently challenging,” he adds, “but the approach of utterly disregarding civilian collateral damage in Gaza by the IDF is absolutely condemnable.”

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But Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu says it’s not his fault.

“It is Hamas not Israel that should be held accountable for committing a double war crime - targeting civilians while hiding behind civilians,” he said in a statement released about 11am AEDT.

“The forces of civilization must back Israel in defeating Hamas barbarism.”

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Original URL: https://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/israeli-defence-force-begins-military-operation-against-gazas-largest-hospital-satellite-pics-show-tanks-amassed-outside/news-story/58613a81a262b1daf5d793b490cfce0d