What evidence has Israel presented of a Hamas presence at Gaza’s hospitals?
Israel has besieged and raided multiple hospitals in the Gaza Strip over the past year, claiming the attacks are necessary because Hamas uses them as command and control bases.
After more than a year of war, what evidence has Israel presented to support these claims?
Turns out, not much at all.
That’s according to the Associated Press news agency.
The AP said it examined Israeli raids on three hospitals in northern Gaza – the al-Awda, Indonesian and Kamal Adwan hospitals – in late 2023, and found that Israel has presented “little or even no evidence” of a significant Hamas presence at any of them.
- At the Indonesian Hospital, Israel’s military claimed a Hamas command-and-control centre lay underneath it, but following its raid, made no mention of an underground facility or tunnels. Israel’s attacks killed 12 at the facility, while dozens of incoming patients also died because of its siege, AP reported.
- At Kamal Adwan, Israel produced no evidence to back its claims that Hamas used the facility, the AP reported. “It said soldiers uncovered weapons but showed footage only of a single pistol.” Meanwhile, at least 10 patients died as a result of Israel’s siege, while witnesses told AP that troops set dogs on staff and patients and bulldozers crushed tents housing displaced people.
- At al-Awda, the AP said Israel’s military did not even make claims of a Hamas presence when it besieged and raided the facility late last year. At least three doctors and a patient were killed when a shell blasted its operating room in November while two pregnant women walking to the facility to give birth were shot and bled to death in December, AP reported.
A woman sits on a bed in a room of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip on August 25
WFP warns of looming famine in Gaza
The World Food Programme is warning that “the lack of food and other vital humanitarian supplies entering the Gaza Strip could soon escalate into famine unless immediate action is taken”.
The UN agency said it reached only 42 percent of the 1.1 million people targeted for food assistance in October due to a lack of supplies and access.
“North Gaza remains under siege since early October, with humanitarian agencies unable to reach people in need. Urgent international effort is required to allow the delivery of critical assistance and grant humanitarian agencies access to the area,” it added.
How many humanitarian trucks entered Gaza in October?
Figures from the UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA) show that only 971 humanitarian trucks were allowed to enter the Gaza Strip through the main Karem Abu Salem crossing in the south from October 1 to 27.
This represents a daily average of only 36 humanitarian trucks, and is well below the pre-war average of 500 trucks per day.
Virtually no aid has reached residents of northern Gaza, who remain trapped by an Israeli siege that is now nearing a month.
UNRWA’s Lazzarini says aid entering Gaza at ‘lowest in a long time’
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini says Israeli authorities allowed an average of only 30 trucks of aid a day to enter Gaza last month, bringing assistance to its “lowest in a long time”.
This is equivalent to only 6 percent of commercial and humanitarian supplies entering Gaza before the war broke out on October 7, 2023, he said on X.
Lazzarini warned this was insufficient to respond to the needs of more than two million people, “many of whom are starving, sick and in desperate conditions”.
Israel today notified the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which is the largest provider of aid in the occupied Palestinian territory, that it was cancelling a cooperation agreement from 1967 that provided a legal basis for its operations.
In a legally binding order, the International Court of Justice in March ordered Israel to open more land crossings to allow aid into Gaza. The measures were requested by South Africa as part of its continuing case that accuses Israel of carrying out genocide in Gaza.
