The U.S. intelligence community is “confident in its judgment” that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller terrorist group also based in Gaza, used the Shifa Hospital and underground facilities for their terroristic benefit.
Israeli leaders alleged the groups had been using the hospital, though they “largely evacuated days” before Israeli forces approached the hospital and raided it on Nov. 15, an official told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday.
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The U.S. official said Hamas and PIJ used the hospital complex and “sites beneath it to house command infrastructure, exercise certain command-and-control activities, store some weapons, and hold at least a few hostages” while they “destroyed documents and electronics at the complex in advance of the IDF’s operation.”
Israel’s raid on the hospital complex has been one of the pivotal moments of the war, which first began when Hamas carried out the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history on Oct. 7. Hamas uses hospitals, mosques, schools, and other civilian institutions to surround itself with civilians as human shields, which presents an impossible situation for Israeli forces, who are often forced to operate in environments surrounded by civilians.
The new affirmation from the U.S. intelligence community provides a level of confirmation amid concerns that Israel has not done enough to prevent civilian casualties, in addition to speculation from news outlets that they were wrong about Shifa Hospital.
President Joe Biden has largely stood by Israel since the Oct. 7 attacks, even as he pressed for the country to do more to prevent civilian casualties.
“Here’s the situation: You have a circumstance where the first war crime is being committed by Hamas by having their headquarters, their military, hidden under a hospital. And that’s a fact, that’s what’s happened,” Biden said around the time of the raid in mid-November. “We’ve discussed the need for them to be incredibly careful.”
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Roughly 1,200 people were killed in the Oct. 7 massacre, while another 240 were kidnapped and brought back to Gaza, where about half of them are still being held. Israel’s military response has caused overwhelming death and destruction within the area.
More than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war broke out, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry, though that tally does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. The overwhelming death toll has raised concerns of possible Israeli war crimes, which it vociferously disputes, including questions related to collective punishment.
