JERUSALEM (AP) – They were built to be places of healing. But once again, three hospitals in northern Gaza are encircled by Israeli troops and under fire.
As staff scramble to treat waves of wounded, they remain haunted by a war that has seen hospitals targeted with an intensity and overtness rarely seen in modern warfare.
All three were besieged and raided by Israeli troops some 10 months ago. The Kamal Adwan, al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals still have not recovered from the damage, yet are the only hospitals even partially operational in the area.
Medical facilities often come under fire in wars, but combatants usually depict such incidents as accidental or exceptional, since hospitals enjoy special protection under international law.
In its yearlong campaign in Gaza, Israel has stood out by carrying out an open campaign on hospitals, besieging and raiding at least 10 of them across the Gaza Strip, some several times, as well as hitting multiple others in strikes.
Most prominently, Israel twice raided Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, the biggest medical facility in the strip, producing a video animation depicting it as a major Hamas base, though the evidence it presented remains disputed.
But the focus on Shifa has overshadowed raids on other facilities. The AP spent months gathering accounts of the raids on al-Awda, Indonesian and Kamal Adwan Hospitals, interviewing more than three dozen patients, witnesses and medical and humanitarian workers as well as Israeli officials.
It found that Israel has presented little or even no evidence of a significant Hamas presence in those cases. The AP presented a dossier listing the incidents reported by those it interviewed to the Israeli military spokesman’s office. The office said it could not comment on specific events.
AL-AWDA HOSPITAL: ‘A DEATH SENTENCE’
The Israeli military has never made any claims of a Hamas presence at al-Awda. When asked what intelligence led troops to besiege and raid the hospital last year, the military spokesman’s office did not reply.
In recent weeks, the hospital has been paralysed once again, with Israeli troops fighting in nearby Jabalia refugee camp and no food, water or medical supplies entering areas of northern Gaza.
Its director Mohammed Salha said last month that the facility was surrounded by troops and was unable to evacuate six critical patients. Staff were down to eating one meal a day, usually just a flat bread or a bit of rice, he said.
The hospital’s director, Ahmed Muhanna, was seized by Israeli troops; his whereabouts remain unknown. One of Gaza’s leading doctors, orthopedist Adnan al-Bursh, was also detained during the raid and died in Israeli custody in May.
INDONESIAN HOSPITAL: ‘PATIENTS DYING BEFORE YOUR EYES’
Several blocks away, on October 18, artillery hit the upper floors of Indonesian Hospital, staff said. People fled for their lives. They’d already been surrounded by Israeli troops, leaving doctors and patients inside without enough food, water and supplies. “The bombing around us has increased. They’ve paralysed us,” said an Indonesian volunteer Edi Wahyudi.
Two patients died because of a power outage and lack of supplies, said United Nations (UN) humanitarian coordinator for Palestinian territories Muhannad Hadi.
Tamer al-Kurd, a nurse at the hospital, said around 44 patients and only two doctors remain. He said he was so dehydrated he was starting to hallucinate.
“People come to me to save them. I can’t do that by myself, with two doctors,” he said in a voice message, his voice weak. “I’m tired.”
Recently, the Israeli military said it had facilitated the evacuation of 29 patients from Indonesian and al-Awda hospitals.
The Indonesian is Northern Gaza’s largest hospital. Today its top floors are charred, its walls pockmarked by shrapnel, its gates strewn with piled-up rubble – all the legacy of Israel’s siege in the autumn of 2023.
Before the assault, the Israeli army claimed an underground command-and-control centre lay beneath the hospital.
It released blurry satellite images of what it said was a tunnel entrance in the yard and a rocket launchpad nearby, outside the hospital compound.
The Indonesia-based group that funds the hospital denied any Hamas presence.
“If there’s a tunnel, we would know. We know this building because we built it brick by brick, layer by layer. It’s ridiculous,” Hospital manager from the Indonesia-based Medical Emergency Rescue Committee Arief Rachman told the AP last month.
After besieging and raiding the hospital, the military did not mention or show evidence of the underground facility or tunnels it had earlier claimed. When asked if any tunnels were found, the military spokesman’s office did not reply.
Kamal Adwan Hospital, once a linchpin of northern Gaza’s health system, was burning last week. Israeli shells crashed into the third floor, igniting a fire that destroyed medical supplies, according to the World Health Organization, which had delivered the equipment just days before.
‘THIS MAKES NO SENSE’
The artillery hit water tanks and damaged the dialysis unit, badly burning four medics who tried to extinguish the blaze, said the hospital’s director Hossam Abu Safiya.
In videos pleading for help over the past weeks, Abu Safiya had fought to maintain his composure as Israeli forces surrounded the hospital. But last weekend, there were tears in his eyes.
“Everything we have built, they have burned,” he said, his voice cracking. “They burned our hearts. They killed my son.”
THE FALLOUT
Despite often suggesting hospitals are linked to Hamas’ underground networks, the military has shown only one tunnel shaft from all the hospitals it raided – one leading to Shifa’s grounds.
In a report last month, a UN investigation commission determined that “Israel has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza”. It described Israeli actions at hospitals as “collective punishment against the Palestinians in Gaza”.
President of MedGlobal Zaher Sahloul who has also worked in Gaza during the war, said the sense of safety that should surround hospitals has been destroyed. – Isabel Debre, Julia Frankel & Lee Keath
