I hope you are not surprised by what you are about to read.
From a just-released Reuters article:
Israeli troops found Hamas weapons and combat gear in Al Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip during a search on Wednesday, chief Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.
The army simultaneously released a video that it said showed some of the material recovered from an undisclosed building within the large hospital complex, including automatic weapons, grenades, ammunition and flak jackets.
Hamas, which is battling Israeli forces within the Gaza, dismissed the announcement as “lies and cheap propaganda”.
Israeli troops forced their way into Al Shifa overnight and have spent the day scouring specific locations within Gaza’s largest hospital.
“These assets in Shifa hospital, just like in Rantissi, prove that hospitals have been used for military purposes for terror, in direct opposition to international law,” Hagari said.
Israeli soldiers entered the Rantissi paediatric hospital on Monday, later releasing a video showing what it said were weapons stored by Hamas in the building’s basement.
So far Israeli troops have not gotten to basement, or to what Israel alleges is a complex tunnel system under the hospital which, presumably, would have the really major stuff, like a command center, and lots of classified information (though I would assume hamas has been removing it now that Israel is closing in).
Until Israel gets there, of course, we will not know for sure whether any such under-the-hospital command center exists.
But, given hamas’ propensity for using civilians as human shields – which even the most rabid Israel hater/hamas apologist would have a hard time denying – and the fact that a hospital would be about as overt a usage of civilians as human shields as there could be, I’d put the likelihood in the range, of oh, about 100%.
We should know one way or the other in the next day or two. More on this as it develops.
