US relied on intercepts to assess Hamas operations at Gaza hospital

Signals intelligence gathered independently of Israel was among information behind assessment that Hamas and other militants were using al-Shifa Hospital complex.

Patients inside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Friday. Picture: AFP

The US assessment this week that Hamas and other Palestinian militants were operating within Gaza’s largest hospital complex was based in part on intercepted communications of fighters inside the compound, people familiar with the matter said Wednesday.

The signals intelligence, which was picked up in recent weeks, was among several pieces of US-gathered information, the people said. And it was among the information that led the White House and Pentagon to announce Tuesday for the first time that the US believed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, also known as PIJ, were using al-Shifa Hospital “as a way to conceal and support their military operations and hold hostages”.

The people familiar with the matter declined to provide more details about the US intelligence on al-Shifa, but stressed it was based on multiple streams of data and was collected independently of Israel.

The US assessment “is US information based on a variety of sources, but we are not getting into sources and methods”, a US official said.

The U.S. hasn’t been able to determine details of Hamas’s alleged operations at al-Shifa, including their size and scope or whether the group’s fighters are operating inside the hospital, underground or both, a US official said. The US has said it has also picked up intelligence about other hospitals.

Israel has said that al-Shifa Hospital’s grounds sit atop underground complexes and a command centre used by militants, and the Israeli military began conducting operations targeting it in recent days. On Wednesday, Israeli soldiers moved into the extensive hospital compound, where thousands of people have been sheltering, highlighting the risks to civilians of its urban offensive in Gaza following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

Israeli forces searched buildings and questioned Palestinians sheltering there. A senior Israeli military official said Wednesday that soldiers killed four Hamas fighters who attacked them outside the hospital. The official said soldiers found weapons and other “concrete evidence” that militants had been operating in the hospital. Later Wednesday, Israel released video footage from the hospital that it said proved the site was being used by Hamas. There were no immediate reports of hostages found inside the hospital.

Hamas denies using the hospital for any militant activities, which would be considered a war crime.

Hospitals have specific protections under international law. But under the Geneva Conventions, hospitals can lose that protected status if an armed group uses a hospital to “commit acts harmful to the enemy.” Israel has faced broad international condemnation for killing civilians and destroying infrastructure in Gaza. But in releasing its own intelligence assessment that Palestinian militants were using the al-Shifa Hospital — information that was declassified earlier this week — the Biden administration buttressed Israel’s arguments for its military operation there.

“They have tunnels underneath these hospitals. And so Hamas and PIJ members operate a command-and-control node from al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. They have weapons stored there and are prepared to respond to an Israeli military operation against the facility,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters on Tuesday. That is what the “intelligence community assesses is happening in Gaza City (and) how Hamas is using these hospitals to operate”.

Some US and Western allies worried in the lead up to the attack on al-Shifa that any civilian deaths would galvanise regional opposition to Israel, potentially drawing players such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah into the war and sparking a wider conflict. For US officials, one challenge to pushing back against Israel’s approach is that there are no examples in warfare in which an armed group has hidden so aggressively amongst civilian infrastructure and population centres.

The US, which has designated Hamas as a terrorist organisation, has publicly blamed the group for civilian deaths.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The Pentagon declined to comment.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the US all but stopped spying on Hamas after the September 11, 2001, attacks as it pursued al-Qa’ida, ceding responsibility for Hamas to Israel. The latest intelligence suggests Washington has redirected intelligence collection assets toward Gaza since Hamas’s October 7 attack.

The Wall Street Journal