The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has called for an independent, international investigation into “Israel’s absurd claims that Palestinian groups were using Al-Shifa Medical Complex and other hospitals in the Gaza Strip for military purposes.”
Israel has long claimed that Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes, especially Al-Shifa Hospital which Israel claims that there is a Hamas command centre located underneath.
Hamas, the hospital staff and several international organisations that had access to the hospital all assert that there are no military installations or soldiers at al-Shifa.
The Rights Monitor noted in a statement, “The absence of any neutral international party’s involvement in the Israeli military raids and searches of Al-Shifa Medical Complex and other hospitals in the Strip raises widespread doubts about the Israeli narrative.”
According to Euro-Med Monitor, Israel needs to offer the “outside world more than a few rifles and other armaments to justify its attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and ill and injured civilians.”
The call for independent investigation has also been made by UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights. Volker Türk called on Israel to grant independent investigators access to Gaza to probe the competing claims.
“This is precisely where you need an independent international investigation, because we have different narratives,” said Türk on Thursday, after Israel’s military released video of what it called a Hamas “operational tunnel shaft” in the complex’s grounds, a claim immediately rejected by the militant group and medical administrators as “ridiculous.”
“You cannot use … hospitals, for any military purposes. But you also cannot attack a hospital in the absence of clear evidence,” he added.
Meanwhile, Omar Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, opined that Israel has so far failed to prove claims that Hamas operates a command centre underneath al-Shifa Hospital.
Rahman said, “Israel has been saying for weeks that there is a command centre underneath [al-Shifa Hospital] and it has been using these kinds of claims to justify its bombardment of civilian infrastructure – which if untrue, is a war crime under international law.”
“Under international law, you [still] don’t have the right to bomb civilians if there are combatants inside, ” Rahman added.
“Nonetheless, Israel has stated that there’s a huge command centre underneath al-Shifa and they need to prove that.
“But nothing we’ve seen so far has shown any evidence of that. All the kinds of evidence … look staged to even a novice observer – a handful of rifles, a flak jacket and a blurred computer. That does not show any evidence of a whole movement – a military wing – is operating out of.”
Omar Rahman
Analysts say that without independent verification, people are going to be very cynical about the claims that are being made and even if they turn out to be true, “There will be a huge deficit in trust in place.”
Israel Raids Jenin
Also on Friday, Israeli army raided Ibn Sina Hospital complex in the occupied West Bank near Jenin refugee camp. At least 14 people were injured.
The army said it killed five people in an operation in Jenin.
Dozens of Israeli military vehicles entered the West Bank city of Jenin and surrounded the Ibn Sina Hospital.
The military also said that it exchanged fire with Palestinian fighters who allegedly used ambulances to flee towards the Ibn Sina Hospital “in order to hide there”.
It was reported that Israeli soldiers turned up at the hospital where they asked medical staff to put their hands up and evacuate the building. Some of the medics were interrogated for an hour and then released.
Israel also launched air attacks in Jabalia refugee camp, killing at least 18 people.
