Israeli troops said Wednesday that they had uncovered caches of weapons, computers and other elements of the Palestinian Hamas militia’s arsenal hidden inside the Shifa hospital in Gaza, even as the raid on the enclave’s largest medical facility added fuel to a white-hot global debate over the humanitarian cost of the Israeli offensive.
The Israel Defense Forces released video footage that appears to have been taken inside the Shifa hospital, the controversial epicenter of an Israeli ground campaign in Gaza to crush Hamas. The seven-minute, single-shot video recording was released on social media. Among other things, it seems to show guns, ammunition, flak jackets and other battlefield gear stashed in the Shifa hospital’s MRI room and elsewhere in the facility.
The Israeli advance is part of a retaliatory campaign by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to avenge a daylong rampage by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 that killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and took some 240 civilian and military hostages into the Gaza Strip. Palestinian health officials say a combination of Israeli airstrikes and ground advances has killed more than 11,000 Gaza residents. The casualty figure cannot be independently verified.
The footage released by Israel appears to show weapons sitting on shelves alongside bandages and other traditional medical supplies, bolstering the Israeli argument that the Iran-backed militant Palestinian group — which Israel and the U.S. consider a terrorist organization — is perfectly willing to use hospitals and the vulnerable patients inside as shields.
“Hamas systematically uses hospitals in their military operations in violation of international law. And what we have found, I think, is only the tip of the iceberg,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, IDF spokesman, said in the video as he and other Israeli military personnel scoured the hospital.
Mr. Netanyahu, backed by the Biden administration, has said Israel would consider brief pauses to allow civilians to flee or aid to be delivered. He rejected a blanket cease-fire that he said would only protect Hamas from retribution for its actions.
On Wednesday, the Biden administration refused to use its veto to block a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an “extended” humanitarian break in the fighting to allow aid deliveries to struggling Gaza residents. The U.S. abstained on the final vote in New York.
The video footage seems partially designed as a public relations tool to counter claims by Hamas officials and other Arab leaders that Israel is carrying out indiscriminate, inhumane attacks on the more than 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza. Indeed, in some corners of the world, the pushback against the IDF campaign has reached a fever pitch, with prominent figures arguing that Israel, not Hamas, is the true terrorist outfit.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an outspoken critic of Israel’s campaign against Hamas, ramped up his rhetoric on Wednesday.
“Israel is implementing a strategy of total destruction of a city and its people,” Mr. Erdogan said, according to English-language media translations of his remarks. “I say openly that Israel is a terrorist state.”
Mr. Erdogan’s comments may be at the extreme end of the spectrum, but evidence shows the support for Israel after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack may be fading. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday showed a sharp decline in the number of Americans who believe the U.S. should support Israel and a significant increase in the number who believe it should broker a deal between the two warring sides.
Hospital battleground
Israel began the initial raid on the Shifa hospital Tuesday night. It immediately faced sharp condemnation abroad, including from the United Nations, where top officials implored Israel that “hospitals are not battlegrounds” and that the young, sick and elderly inside the hospital must be kept safe.
Israel maintained that it had little choice but to mount such an operation. Hamas commanders are intentionally hiding behind hospitals and other sensitive sites such as schools, Israeli officials say.
Mr. Netanyahu vowed again that his military wouldn’t let up in its fight to defeat Hamas. He suggested in a statement that the IDF would continue raids on hospitals and any other locations believed to be harboring Hamas fighters or weapons.
“There is no place in Gaza that we cannot reach. There are no hideouts. There is no shelter or refuge for the Hamas murderers,” Mr. Netanyahu said, according to media reports.
At the hospital, Munir al-Boursh, a senior official with Gaza’s Health Ministry, told The Associated Press that Israeli forces had ransacked the basement and other buildings at Shifa, including those housing the emergency and surgery departments. The Health Ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, had died since Shifa’s emergency generator ran out of fuel Saturday. Another 36 babies were at risk of dying because of the loss of power for incubators, AP reported.
Hamas runs Gaza’s Health Ministry, whose figures have not been independently verified. Given the intense fighting on the ground, many of its assertions cannot be fully corroborated by outside groups.
Israel said its troops delivered incubators, baby food, medicine and other badly needed supplies to the facility while conducting the raid.
That did little to quell the growing anger abroad. Mr. Erdogan was hardly alone in his sharp critique of Israel. Other officials called on the U.N. Security Council to intervene and stop Israel’s actions.
“The misery in Shifa hospital shows the barbarism [the Security Council’s] silence is allowing. How can the SC remain silent on forcing babies out of incubators?” Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s minister of foreign affairs, said in a social media post. “We condemn the silence on this brutality. It is providing cover for war crimes. It is unacceptable, unjustifiable. The council must act.”
At the United Nations, officials pleaded with Israel to change course.
“Hospitals are not battlegrounds,” U.N. relief coordinator Martin Griffiths said, though he also stressed that Hamas must not use “a place like a hospital as a shield for their presence.”
Late in the day, the Security Council endorsed a resolution proposed by the nation of Malta calling for a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting to allow aid into the Palestinian enclave. The U.S., which vetoed some earlier resolutions as the fighting was underway, abstained on the vote. The resolution called for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip for a sufficient number of days to enable … the full, rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access.”
Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, said the resolution was “regretfully detached from the reality on the ground” because it did not condemn the Hamas attack that sparked the latest fighting.
With global public opinion seemingly hardening against Israel, Americans appeared to be softening in their backing of the IDF campaign.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday found that just 32% of Americans believe “the U.S. should support Israel,” down from 41% who said the same a month ago in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack. The respondents were asked what role the U.S. should take in the fighting.
A plurality of Americans, about 39%, said Washington should be a “neutral mediator” in the conflict, up from 27% who said that four weeks ago. About 4% said the U.S. should support the Palestinians, and 15% said the U.S. shouldn’t be involved at all.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, addressing reporters while with President Biden for a summit of Pacific Rim nations in San Francisco, appeared to distance Washington from the latest fighting centered on the Gaza hospital complex, saying Israel was calling the shots on its own campaign.
“We did not give an OK to their military operations around the hospital,” Mr. Kirby said. “We don’t expect the Israelis to inform us.”
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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