What lies beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, has been an open secret for years among ordinary residents of the territory, and not least of all to officials watching from the eyrie of Israel’s vaunted security establishment.
Above ground is an overrun hospital; below the surface is a military nerve centre so vast that even terrorists captured on October 7 were happy to gossip about it with interrogators.
“Most senior Hamas political and military officials are hiding in the hospitals, especially in Shifa,” one Hamas operative said during questioning, video of which was released by the IDF.
It’s the “double war crime” that Israel has been shouting about for decades, proof that Hamas quite literally and obscenely hides behind its own population while indiscriminately attacking civilians just across the border.
The IDF clearly began laying plans for a takeover of al-Shifa weeks ago, disseminating maps and 3D graphics of not only the underground hiding spots but also the vast network of tunnels, situation rooms and weapons stores that have been carved into the earth.
Tapped phone calls were released as evidence that Hamas is hoarding fuel from al-Shifa to run air generators for its tunnels. Footage was also made available this week from the basement of Gaza’s Rantisi hospital, where explosive belts, grenades, Kalashnikovs and RPG missiles were uncovered.
Hamas leaders have always bargained that they would be kept safe using al-Shifa as a military cover, expecting Israel wouldn’t attack such a sensitive civilian location.
That may have been true, but the events of October 7, and the abduction of 240 hostages, have fundamentally shifted Israel’s military calculations.
The result has been an undeniable turning point in the conflict, with IDF forces now storming a section of al-Shifa in a raid that was predicated on “operational necessities” and obvious indications that “Hamas terrorist activity is being directed from the area”.
Not surprisingly, troops entered the hospital within hours of the White House revealing it had intelligence of its own that Hamas was using al-Shifa to run a military campaign, and probably to store weapons.
As National Security spokesman John Kirby said: “That is a war crime”. It’s a phrase that seemed to act as the green light that Israel had been seeking.
Israelis have been waiting for this moment since the start of the conflict. It signifies a direct assault on Hamas’s leadership apparatus, and could potentially lead to a recovery of hostages, if they’re held in the vicinity, as suspected, as others were thought to have been at Rantisi.
More critically, moving on al-Shifa stands to vindicate years of Israeli insistence that Hamas never comported itself as a functional government, and never tried to be, either – that it only ever existed to exploit its civilian population for a warped, religiously motivated ambition to destroy the Jewish state.
It’s a point that was effectively conceded by former Hamas leader and current official Khaled Mashaal during a television interview with the Al Arabiya news network last month.
Asked if the attacks of October 7 had not pointlessly led to the deaths of innocents on both sides of the border, Mashaal replied “We know very well the consequences of our operation on October 7”, going on to explain that millions of civilians had died in Russia during World War II, and in the Vietnam War.
The implication was that Hamas expected the same from Gazans.
“The Palestinian nation is just like any other nation,” he said.
“No nation is liberated without sacrifices.”
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