Gaza’s hospitals have emerged as a focus in Israel’s battle with Hamas, with all sides citing how the opposite has pulled the amenities into the battle as proof of the enemy’s disregard for the security of civilians.

In 4 months of battle, Israeli troops have entered a number of hospitals, together with the Qatari Hospital, Kamal Adwan Hospital and Al-Rantisi Specialized Hospital for Children, to seek for weapons and fighters. But Al-Shifa Hospital has taken on explicit significance as a result of it’s Gaza’s largest medical facility, and due to Israel’s high-profile claims that Hamas leaders operated a command-and-control heart beneath it. Hamas and the hospital’s workers, in the meantime, insisted it was solely a medical heart.

Al-Shifa’s worth as a army goal was not instantly clear within the days after the Nov. 15 raid, even after the Israeli army launched the tunnel video that was used to create the 3-D mannequin seen right here.

But proof examined by The New York Times suggests Hamas used the hospital for canopy, saved weapons inside it and maintained a hardened tunnel beneath the advanced that was equipped with water, energy and air-conditioning.

Classified Israeli intelligence paperwork, obtained and reviewed by The Times, point out that the tunnel is at the very least 700 ft lengthy, twice so long as the army revealed publicly, and that it extends past the hospital and certain connects to Hamas’s bigger underground community.

According to categorised pictures reviewed by The Times, Israeli troopers discovered underground bunkers, residing quarters and a room that gave the impression to be wired for computer systems and communications gear alongside part of the tunnel past the hospital — chambers that weren’t seen within the video launched by the Israeli army.

The Israeli army, nonetheless, has struggled to show that Hamas maintained a command-and-control heart beneath the ability. Critics of the Israeli army say the proof doesn’t assist its early claims, noting that it had distributed materials earlier than the raid exhibiting 5 underground complexes and in addition had stated the tunnel community may very well be reached from wards inside a hospital constructing. Israel has publicly revealed the existence of just one tunnel entrance on the grounds of the hospital, on the shack exterior its fundamental buildings.

The Israeli army says that it moved fastidiously as a result of the tunnel was booby-trapped and ran out of time to research earlier than it destroyed the tunnel and withdrew from the hospital. Israeli and Qatari officers, talking on situation of anonymity, stated Israel needed to depart the hospital to adjust to the phrases of a short lived ceasefire in late November.

American officers have stated their own intelligence backs up the Israeli case, together with proof that Hamas used Al-Shifa to carry at the very least a number of hostages. American intelligence additionally signifies that Hamas fighters evacuated the advanced days earlier than Israeli forces moved into Al-Shifa, destroying paperwork and electronics as they left.

Hospitals are protected beneath worldwide legislation, even when they supply medical take care of combatants, however their use for different acts which are “harmful to the enemy” could make them official targets for army motion. But any motion should weigh the anticipated army benefit in opposition to the anticipated hurt to civilians.

Al-Shifa, Israeli officers have argued, is an instance of Hamas’s willingness to make use of hospitals as cowl and switch civilians into human shields. But critics say it is usually an instance of the toll on civilians when Israeli forces encompass and raid hospitals to pursue Hamas fighters or rescue hostages, operations that may reduce off docs from gasoline and provides and residents from urgently wanted medical care.

Five premature babies died at Al-Shifa earlier than the raid “due to lack of electricity and fuel,” based on the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which helped set up the evacuation of 31 different infants.

“We all know that the health care system is or has collapsed,” Lynn Hastings, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, has instructed reporters.

Israel launched its battle in Gaza after the Hamas-led assault on Oct. 7, through which at the very least 1,200 folks have been killed and greater than 200 have been taken hostage. Since the beginning of the battle, greater than 28,000 folks have been killed in Gaza, based on well being officers there.

In the face of worldwide opprobrium over its raids on hospitals, Israel has publicized proof that it says exhibits that Hamas hid fighters among the many unwell and injured, and held hostages within the amenities. The Israeli army stated that earlier than getting into Al-Shifa, it warned the buildings’ occupants, opened evacuation routes and despatched Arabic-speaking medical groups together with the troopers.

Hamas and Gazan well being officers say the hospitals have served solely as medical amenities. But past accusing the Israeli army of planting proof at hospitals, Hamas and Gazan officers haven’t immediately refuted the proof introduced by Israel.

The Israeli army stated it apprehended dozens of “terror operatives” at Kamal Adwan Hospital in December, and launched movies, on the time, of males carrying weapons. A spokesman for the well being ministry in Gaza stated that Israeli forces had requested the hospital’s directors handy over the weapons of its safety guards.

After the raid on the Qatari Hospital, the generally used title for the Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics, the Israeli army confirmed a video on Nov. 5 of what it stated was the doorway to “a tunnel that was being used for terror infrastructures” on the hospital’s grounds.

But the video seems to point out one thing else: a water storage space in-built 2016, when the hospital was constructed, based on engineering plans and pictures from the hospital’s development reviewed by The Times.

The Israeli army declined to supply further imagery to assist its assertion that this was a tunnel entryway or a part of a tunnel advanced.

Just earlier than the Al-Shifa raid, Israeli forces entered Al-Rantisi hospital, on Nov. 13, quickly after its remaining sufferers and workers had left. Within days, the military released two videos that confirmed weapons and explosives it stated it discovered there, and a room the place it stated hostages had been saved. The well being ministry in Gaza disputed the assertions made within the movies and stated the weapons have been planted.

One of the videos released by Israel confirmed troops dashing into the hospital and showing to seek out explosives, weapons and the hostage room. In the opposite, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, chief spokesman for the Israeli army, confirmed off weapons, explosives and different weapons that he stated have been discovered within the basement of the hospital.

The video included footage of a bit of paper taped to a wall within the hospital’s basement. Admiral Hagari stated the paper — a grid with Arabic phrases and numbers inside every sq. — may very well be a schedule for guarding hostages “where every terrorist writes his name.”

The Gazan well being ministry stated it was nothing greater than a piece schedule. But the calendar begins on Oct. 7, the day of the Hamas terrorist assault on Israel, and an Arabic title written on the high makes use of the militants’ title for the assault: “Al Aqsa Flood Battle, 7/10/2023.”

Given its measurement and historical past, taking management of Al-Shifa was all the time a extra vital aim for the Israeli army than the opposite smaller amenities.

There is substantial unbiased proof that Hamas constructed an unlimited tunnel community throughout Gaza. Senior Israeli protection officers, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate intelligence issues, estimate the community is between 350 and 450 miles — extraordinary figures for a territory that at its longest level is just 25 miles. The officers estimate there are literally thousands of entrances to the community.

There can be established documentation that Hamas used Al-Shifa earlier than the battle to masks a few of its actions. During Israel’s three-week battle with Hamas in 2008, armed Hamas fighters in civilian clothes have been seen roaming Al-Shifa’s corridors and killing an Israeli collaborator, based on a Times correspondent reporting in Gaza on the time. Six years later, throughout the subsequent spherical of preventing, the militants routinely held information conferences on the hospital and used it as a protected assembly place for Hamas officers to talk with journalists.

After that battle, Amnesty International reported that Hamas had used deserted areas of Al-Shifa, “including the outpatients’ clinic area, to detain, interrogate, torture and otherwise ill-treat suspects, even as other parts of the hospital continued to function as a medical center.”

Israel’s critics, although, countered with statements made on the time by two Norwegian docs, who described themselves as pro-Palestinian activists and had labored in Gaza throughout the 2014 battle. They insisted that they noticed no Hamas presence at Al-Shifa.

Israel has additionally launched video footage, taken by the hospital’s personal safety cameras, which it says exhibits two hostages being delivered to Al-Shifa shortly after being kidnapped within the Oct. 7 assault.

The Al-Shifa tunnel was found by following ducts that ran underground from air-conditioning models that have been powered by the hospital’s electrical energy provide and mounted on one in every of its buildings, officers stated. Israeli troopers additionally discovered proof that the hospital’s water provide was being fed to the tunnel.

The Israeli army has additionally displayed weapons and different gear it stated have been discovered inside Al-Shifa, together with grenades positioned close to an MRI machine. Among the cache introduced to journalists have been belongings that Israeli officers stated had been taken from hostages, together with a bag emblazoned with the title Be’eri, a kibbutz attacked by Hamas.

The army additionally stated it discovered weapons in Al-Shifa’s parking zone, and a Toyota automobile similar to these used within the Oct. 7 assault and loaded with the identical gear that militants carried throughout the raid, together with weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. Israeli officers speculated that it was a spare automobile not used within the assault.

Some of what the Israeli army has proven thus far doesn’t wholly match the outline of a terrorist headquarters that it supplied forward of its floor invasion of Gaza on Oct. 27.

Underneath Al-Shifa, the Israeli army wrote in a lengthy post on its web site, “lies a labyrinth of tunnels and underground compounds used by Hamas’s leaders to direct terrorist activities and rocket fire and to manufacture and store a variety of weapons and ammunition.”

There might not be a approach to immediately assess that declare. Israeli forces remained at Al-Shifa for a bit of greater than per week.

Hours earlier than Israeli forces left the hospital on Nov. 24, troopers lined the tunnel with explosives and destroyed it in a blast that despatched plumes of smoke excessive into the air and rocked buildings on the bottom above.