7 Days of Invasion and Siege of Al-Shifa Hospital: The Occupation Targets the Health System in Gaza
After 170 days of conflict, the Israeli occupation has failed to achieve its objectives in the Gaza Strip. The primary goal was to eliminate or even weaken the Palestinian resistance. However, the resistance continues to confront the occupation on multiple fronts and operational areas. In an attempt to cover its failure, the occupation resorted to targeting the health system again, but failed to achieve any goal, despite its utmost efforts over seven continuous days. The resistance operations continue to resist until this moment.
The Motives of the Israeli Occupation in Targeting Al-Shifa Hospital
At the beginning of this month, the Gaza police were tasked with establishing a crisis management cell responsible for coordinating, managing, and protecting relief efforts in northern Gaza. Al-Shifa Hospital was designated as the headquarters for relief operations in northern Gaza, and three departments were established in the central, southern, and Rafah areas, technically following the cell’s administration in Al-Shifa Hospital.
According to previous statements by UN officials, this administration took on the task of supervising public safety in what remained of northern Gaza after the withdrawal of the occupation forces in December 2023. It supervised civil defense operations and the work of municipal bodies, secured uninhabited areas from vandals and organized theft gangs, supervised the extraction of martyrs buried for months under the rubble, and coordinated and managed relief operations in northern Gaza.
The responsibility placed on the resistance through this civil administration is to strive to the maximum extent to preserve the civility of this facility and stay away from it as much as possible to protect its civilian identity. UN reports indicate that this administration was able to prepare a plan to accommodate the most important social problems of the people and start solving them within less than two weeks, and it had unprecedented field successes.
Here, observers confirm that the recent Israeli aggression on Al-Shifa Hospital aimed primarily to destroy this structure, which succeeded in its tasks in a very short period. This did not appeal to the occupation entity in its endeavor to undermine all active institutions in Gaza, whether they were affiliated with the Gaza government or the resistance.
Therefore, the occupation’s plan, represented by invading Al-Shifa Hospital, had its main goal to eliminate the crisis cell to pave the way for a framework planned by the enemy, which is to hand over the “civil administration” of the Gaza Strip to individuals, civil society organizations, clans, and families that accept cooperation with the enemy, as is his endeavor in targeting other hospitals.
The Field Situation in the Vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital on the 7th Day of the Invasion
Initially, the entity’s army announced that at 2:30 AM on Monday, the 18th of this month, based on what its leadership claimed to be golden intelligence information, a combat formation operating under the command of the 162nd Brigade, consisting of (the combat team in the 401st Armored Brigade, a company from the Nahal Brigade, and 3 factions from the Shayetet 13 unit, factions from the Duvdevan unit, forces from the Shabak, and the 504 unit affiliated with military intelligence, and factions from Lotar and Rova’im 888 and Sayeret Matkal units).
According to Hebrew media sources, the mission of this formation was to launch an attack on Al-Shifa Hospital, and a brigade of elite infantry and special forces carried out a raid operation on the hospital that began with belts of air raids and artillery shelling from land and sea, while swarms of small armed “quadcopter” drones equipped with night vision technology were launched and began to fire at every moving creature.
UN reports indicate that the presence of the crisis cell affiliated with the Gaza police, which is responsible for coordinating aid to the northern sector, made the Palestinian resistance suffice with organizing a communication operation with the crisis cell and let it work in its civil function that it started in early March of this year, in coordination with UNRWA teams; which denies the nature of the civilian target, (Al-Shifa Hospital) as a military target.
To that, the resistance also confirmed that due to the civil nature of the hospital, the crisis cell only requested a reinforced faction from the Gaza police equipped with individual machine guns to protect the hospital.
In the initial moments of the invasion of the hospital’s external gates, Brigadier General Fa’iq Al-Mubhouh led 25 to 30 members with their modest weapons in a disproportionate battle against two brigades from the 401st and Nahal Brigades; a force ten times their size. In the first clash, the commander of the attacking force, Major “Sebastian Ayon,” was killed by the martyr Brigadier General Fa’iq Al-Mubhouh. “Ayon,” the deceased, also held the responsibility of the commander of the combat formation in the 401st Brigade and one of the brigade’s operations officers.
The Gaza police force managed to prevent the enemy from invading for two hours. However, after the number of participating Zionist forces rose to over 1000 members, the enemy soldiers were able to invade the hospital over the bodies of Brigadier Mubhouh and 29 members of the Gaza police.
Israeli sources, in turn, indicated that in the first minutes of the hospital invasion, “elements from the Shayetet 13 naval commando unit raided the last two floors of the hospital, and the rest of the units’ members were distributed on the other floors.” An Israeli report revealed that the orders given were “kill everyone in the hospital,” and by noon, the number of martyrs rose to 60, most of them doctors, patients, and wounded who were being treated in the hospital.
As soon as they took control of the defenseless hospital and during the three days of the hospital occupation, enemy soldiers carried out arrest operations for everyone who was in the hospital and outside it in the courtyards of refugees. According to Hebrew reports, the occupation army ended its forces’ mission at dawn on March 21, 2024, and kept 250 soldiers and officers in the vicinity of the hospital from the Nahal and 401 Brigades and forces from the Shayetet 13 naval commando unit. This was done to push the people to displace on the one hand, and to engage in psychological and propaganda warfare such as crimes of torture, rape, and murder, to erase the disgrace that befell it on October 7.
The Systematic Targeting of the Health Sector and the UN’s Stance
In this context, the Zionist occupation’s expansion of its fascist war against the health sector and hospitals in the Gaza Strip confirms its determination to continue the genocide against the Palestinian people and attempts to displace them from their land, through the destruction of all means of life in the Gaza Strip, especially hospitals.
Many analysts believe that the non-intervention of the Palestinian resistance in the operations that took place within the premises of Al-Shifa Hospital can be taken from its behavior in the first violation carried out by the entity’s army on the Al-Shifa Medical hospital on November 13, 2023.
It turned out that the hospital, in the first and second times, that there is no resistance in it and that the hospital is a civil health center that is not allowed to approach because of the presence of patients, wounded, and thousands of refugees in it. However, the second invasion, which was carried out this time on the hospital, distinguished it because it was under the protection of the Palestinian Ministry of Interior, i.e., under the auspices of the legitimate institution of the recognized government according to United Nations agreements and Oslo and “Wye Plantation” agreements, which is sponsored by all customs, laws, and international covenants, especially since the party that secures it is a body that has been undertaking social and civil work tasks since the invasion of the northern sector.
In this context, the resistance pointed to the occupation forces’ invasion of Al-Nasr Hospital in Gaza on Saturday night, besieging Al-Amal Hospital and pushing its vehicles towards Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, amidst heavy air raids, in parallel with the continuation of Zionist crimes in the Al-Shifa Medical hospital, against unarmed civilians, patients, and wounded.
It emphasized that these “crimes and brutal attacks, which violate all international agreements and treaties, which make hospitals protected places, and emphasize the protection of civilians; occur in front of the hearing and sight of the whole world, without moving a muscle, at a time when the international system should rise up to deter this rogue entity, and stop its ongoing crimes against our unarmed Palestinian people, and activate against it all accountability and punishment tools.”
The Palestinian resistance affirmed that “these fascist crimes will only increase our people’s insistence on clinging to their land, and our resistance’s steadfastness in the face of the Zionist machine of terror and murder, until the defeat of this aggression, and the achievement of our people’s aspirations for freedom.”
In conclusion, the civil protection and social system has completely collapsed. This is particularly evident in the northern Gaza Strip where the relief and health sector has also collapsed. The capabilities of the Palestinian Red Crescent have been severely weakened due to the deliberate aggression that toppled all its tools, mechanisms, centers, and structures. A large percentage of its cadres have been killed, exacerbating the situation.
Simultaneously, international donor institutions have collapsed and the warehouses of UNRWA and the International Red Cross are empty. This has increased the difficulty of the situation. As a result, the responsibility of the Arab and Islamic nation, as well as the free people of the world, has increased. There is an urgent need for them to support and aid the people of Gaza.