Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in Gaza, remains under the control of the Israeli army and cannot be evacuated, despite still housing thousands of refugees and patients, according to Gaza health authorities. A day and a half after the occupation, the military searched the facilities this Thursday in search of evidence proving that this medical center in the tunnels houses Hamas’s operational command, as the Israeli authorities have insisted for weeks. So far they have only shown a handful of weapons that were allegedly found during the search of the complex, and they claim to have found the entrance to one of these tunnels.
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In addition, this Thursday the Israeli army found the body of Judith Weiss, a 65-year-old hostage in the hands of Hamas and suffering from cancer. Israel Defense Forces have reported finding his body in a building next to Al-Shifa Hospital. The body has already been transferred to Israeli territory. In a statement posted on its Telegram channel, the army said that military equipment, including Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers, was also found in the building where the body was located. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, an attack by Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezedin al-Qasam Brigades, killed one soldier and injured five on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
The director of Al Shifa, Mohamed Abu Salmiya, assured Qatari television channel Al Jazeera that the Israeli military had confiscated the bodies and that they were digging trenches to surround the facilities. In addition to emergency services, the soldiers’ operations focused on radiology, neonatology and the burns unit, he added. Salmiya estimates that in addition to around 5,000 refugees, there are 500 medical staff and around 650 patients, including 36 premature babies. According to the Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip, there are already more than 11,400 deaths in the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip in response to the Hamas attack on October 7, which claimed about 1,200 lives and in which the Islamist militia kidnapped 240 people.
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent via the social network, the Al-Ahli parking lot has already been the scene of an explosion in which between 100 and 300 people died on October 17 from the impact of a projectile that, according to the Israeli government, came from the Gaza Strip itself was fired.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, called this Thursday on the parties to “immediately” accept the humanitarian breaks approved by the Security Council and called for an international investigation to be carried out. “The very serious allegations of multiple and serious violations of international humanitarian law, regardless of who committed them, require rigorous investigation and accountability,” Turk told reporters in Geneva, Agence France Presse reports.
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Türk took stock of his recent trip to the region, which took him, among other things, to the Rafah border crossing on the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza. However, due to the lack of response from the Israeli authorities, the UN official was unable to visit Israel or occupied Palestine. Beyond the Gaza Strip, the High Commissioner expressed concern about “intensifying violence and severe discrimination against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem.”
On the other hand, the heads of several UN agencies and international humanitarian organizations, including Türk himself, announced in a joint statement that they will not support the declaration of a “safe zone” that the parties to the conflict do not agree on. . This means they remain exempt from unilateral decision-making. “We will not participate in the establishment of a security zone in Gaza, which will be established without the consent of all parties and unless the basic conditions are met to ensure that security and other essential needs are met,” they said by around twenty UN organizations and international NGOs, including Unicef, the World Health Organization, the World Food Program and Save The Children.
After forcing more than a million residents of the northern strip to move south on October 18, the Israeli army sent the population to Al Mawasi, a coastal area west of Khan Younis, which it described as a “humanitarian zone” where the Distribution of aid would be organized. Many of the displaced people who fled the bombings sought refuge in the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah, which are also under attack by Israel.
The wind is increasingly blowing against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His political survival is increasingly in doubt after the failure of the Hamas attack on October 7 for a security-obsessed country. On the one hand, hundreds of relatives of those abducted in Gaza are marching on foot from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on a five-day protest march, arriving at the head of government’s residence on Saturday afternoon. On the other hand, moderate Yair Lapid, who was briefly prime minister last year, believes it is time to remove Netanyahu from office. In his X report, he states that a majority of parliament would support a new coalition government led by Netanyahu’s own right-wing Likud party.
Blow up Parliament
Meanwhile, troops are advancing into Gaza City, which is considered a Hamas stronghold. The army shows images of its achievements, such as the bombing of the parliament building shortly after it was taken by the military and the soldiers who took photos inside with the Israeli flag. In recent hours, the residence of the expatriate head of Hamas’s political apparatus, Ismail Haniya, in the north of the Gaza Strip was also attacked from the air. Israel assures that the house was part of the “terrorist” infrastructure from which attacks on its territory were organized.
After several days of siege, troops stormed Al Shifa Hospital in the early hours of Wednesday. Since then, without power, water or food, these facilities have continued to be at the center of the war. Israel has insisted for weeks that Al Shifa hosts Hamas’ central command in Gaza, but the fundamentalist militia denies this. The videos released by the Israeli military in the last few hours from inside the hospital show some weapons, bulletproof vests, documents, computers and CDs, which they say prove that the health center was used as a terrorist base. There is a “well-hidden terrorist infrastructure,” defends a military source in statements to Portal, while soldiers continue to inspect the entire hospital.
A BBC team was authorized to accompany the soldiers inside the complex, but did not report the existence of this command center in its reporting. Military sources assured British public television reporters that the computers found contained images of some of the hostages captured in the Oct. 7 attack, but British public television said its reporters were not authorized to view the contents of the to see pictures.
Gun attack
Parallel to the war in Gaza, tensions in the occupied West Bank continue to rise. A shootout broke out on the outskirts of Jerusalem on Thursday morning, killing one soldier and wounding five other people. The three attackers were killed by Israeli security forces, according to police sources cited by the Israeli press.
The events occurred on the road leading south from Jerusalem through the West Bank. The crime scene, a construction area, is located next to the city of Bethlehem in the West Bank. This is a route often used by settlers from the region’s many settlements and by Palestinians heading toward Hebron or other West Bank cities via the only military checkpoint that Israel currently keeps open, just a few kilometers from the crime scene The shoot.
Since fighting broke out between Hamas and Israel on October 7, the number of roads blocked by security forces in the West Bank has multiplied. One of them leads from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and is only a dozen kilometers long. To do this, you have to travel along the road where the attack occurred, which means a detour of more than twice as many kilometers.
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