Operation Iron Swords - Day 12 - 18 October 2023
Palestinian armed group Hamas launched thousands of missiles at Israel and deployed its militants to infiltrate Jewish settlements near the country’s border with Gaza on 07 October 2023. The 1,200 Israelis killed on the first day would be the equivalent of 36,000 Americans killed in an attack, as a proportion to Israel’s population of 9.3 million people (compared to 332 million in the USA). Israeli President Isaac Herzog stated: “Not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been killed in one day". PM Netanyahu stated "On October 7th, Hamas murdered 1,400 Israelis. Maybe more. This is in a country of fewer than 10 million people. This would be equivalent to over 50,000 Americans murdered in a single day. That’s twenty 9/11s. That is why October 7th is another day that will live in infamy."
The Gaza health ministry said at least 3,478 people have been killed in Gaza and 12,000 wounded in Israeli air raids. Aabout 1,300 people across, including 600 children. Gaza are believed to be buried under the rubble, alive or dead, according to health authorities. The Occupied West Bank saw 62 killed and 1,250 wounded, while Israel numered 1,403 killed and 3,800 wounded. At least 304 Israeli soldiers had been killed since war started.
Nearly 500 people were killed in an explosion at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City at around 7.30pm on 17 October 2023, the deadliest single incident since war broke out between Hamas and Israel on October 7. A Palestinian Ministry of Health spokesperson has gave updates from the explosion at the Gaza hospital of 471 people killed and 314 wounded.
Three thousand people who survived missile attacks in other parts of Gaza had come to take refuge at al-Ahli, where they slept in the garden courtyard and in the upper floors of the hospital building. In the fog of war, reactions have been confused with denials of responsibility from both Israeli and Palestinian camps against a backdrop of competing online narratives and widespread disinformation.
Doctors described with great astonishment the moment of horror they experienced in the Baptist Hospital, Doctors who were in this hospital recounted scenes from that night of terror. Doctor Fadel Naeem, head of the orthopedic surgery department at the Baptist Hospital, heard a huge explosion and his department was filled with people screaming for help. Naeem said, "People entered the operating department screaming, 'Help us, follow us, there are dead and wounded in the hospital.'" He added, "We tried to help those who could be helped, but the number was much greater than the hospital's limited staff could help. He added, "Without warning, this hospital was targeted by a missile. We do not know what it was, but we knew its results by targeting children who were cut into pieces and those who were dismembered."
The Baptist Hospital in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, south of Gaza City, which was founded by the Church of England Missionary Society in 1882, and is considered one of the oldest hospitals in Palestine.
Under international humanitarian law, all warring parties have an obligation to take constant care to spare the civilian population and objects. Hospitals have special protections. Unlawful attacks committed deliberately or recklessly are war crimes.
In 1977, the first of three additional protocols was adopted under the Geneva Conventions. Article 12 clearly states: “Medical units shall be respected and protected at all times and shall not be the object of attack.”
While the Geneva Conventions are for the victims of war, the Hague Conventions address the conduct of warfare and allow for reciprocity toward an enemy party. Article 27 of the regulations states: “In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to … hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected.”
Article 18 of the Geneva Conventions No IV states: “Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict.”
Article 19 further states: “The protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy. Protection may, however, cease only after due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit, and after such warning has remained unheeded."
Israel had ordered several hospitals in Gaza to evacuate, drawing condemnations from medical and rights groups, including Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF). Since the situation escalated following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which began on October 7, and the subsequent Israeli attacks on Gaza, the Israeli army has made several threats to evacuate hospitals, saying that they are vulnerable to targeting and bombing, which was rejected by the administrations of these hospitals, which said that the situation The catastrophic health situation in the sector does not allow this.
A senior health official in Gaza said that Israel had fired two artillery shells as a “warning” at Al-Ahli Hospital days before it bombed it. Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health Yousef Abu al-Rish said the hospital was first attacked on Saturday evening. A day later, the Israeli army called the hospital’s director and told him: “We warned you yesterday with two shells” and asked for the evacuation of the facility, according to Abu al-Rish.
On October 18, Netanyahu reposted evidence collated in a video from the army, showing examples of craters caused by army bombs, including holes of seven and nine metres, and aerial images of the hospital site. There were “no visible signs of craters or evidence of craters or significant damage to buildings,” said the video.
Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told journalists that there was no structural damage to buildings around the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital and no craters consistent with an air strike. The spokesperson accused Hamas of inflating the number of casualties from the explosion and said it could not know as quickly as it claimed what caused the blast. Asked to explain the size of the explosion at the site, Hagari said it was consistent with unspent rocket fuel catching fire. "Most of this damage would have been done due to the propellant, not just the warhead," the Israeli spokesperson said. The Israeli army also released a video showing spokesperson Daniel Hagari translating a recording of a conversation between purported Hamas officials, where they appear to talk about the misfired rocket that had caused the hospital blast.
The IDF stted "The indications of a fire are to be expected given the type of rockets fired by the Islamic Jihad rocket, with much of the rocket propellent still within the rocket due to the significantly shorter flight path of the rocket. The visual footage below shows infrared imagery of the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital’s parking lot. The primary location of the fires is visible, as is debris on the rooftops. Again, no craters are visible and all the walls of the surrounding buildings are intact."
A widely circulated video of the blast, obtained from an Israeli Telegram account called Intellinews, doubled down on the Israeli army’s misfired rocket theory. Israeli analyst David Lisovtsev said: “This is a surface explosion, almost no soil is thrown up, so it’s not an air bomb. Looks like a failed Hamas rocket that landed there, what a tragedy has Hamas brought to the people of Gaza!”
On October 18, Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow for Airpower and Military Technology at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London, posted an image of the hospital’s burned-out parking lot circulated by an analyst at the US Center for Naval Analyses, with no crater visible. “Still not conclusive, but IF this is the extent of the damage then I’d say an airstrike looks less likely than a rocket failure causing an explosion and fuel fire,” he said.
OSINTtechnical provided a picture, that showed "Possible impact crater at the Ahli Hospital in Gaza, roughly 1x1 meter, maybe 30cm deep." Clearly a low calibre weapon impact, whcih alone doesn’t explain the high intensity fire. Tal Hagin noted Flame rather than explosives seems to have been the main result of the impact. Possibly such a small impact crater might result from an air-burst detonation, but the buildings around would not still be standing after such explosion.
Instead, it appears that a few cars were hit and burned. Footage and images obtained by Reuters from inside the hospital showed about two dozen destroyed vehicles in its grounds. The ignited fuel in a car tank cannot build up pressure, so it will just cause a Deflagration without the pressure effect of an explosion. The courtyard, filled with people, would have been in the direct line of shrapnel from the rocket and cars - resulting in horrific and gruesome injuries.
IDF stated "Hamas launches barrages of rockets from areas adjacent to civilian buildings and compounds such as hospitals, UN schools, mosques, restaurants, diplomatic buildings, and hotels. The Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations fire rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians. Rockets have been causing harm to Gazan civilians in addition to Israeli civilians. Yesterday (Tuesday), there was an increase seen in the number of rockets launched at Israel that fell short and landed in the Gaza Strip."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke on live TV from the Kirya in Tel Aviv: "Citizens of Israel, I would like to update you on several matters from my meeting with US President Joe Biden. Yesterday evening, before the US President left for Israel, I presented him with concrete proof that it was Islamic Jihad, and not the IDF, that had fired the missile that struck the hospital in Gaza. I directed our National Public Diplomacy Directorate and the IDF to disseminate this proof, and today the world knows the truth. It will also hear this from the UN Security Council."
US intelligence based on aerial images and intercepted communications shows Israel is not to blame for the attack on a Gaza hospital that killed hundreds, the White House said. “While we continue to collect information, our current assessment – based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information – is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said on social media.
The statement came after US President Biden told reporters in Israel “based on the information we’ve seen to date, it [the strike] appears as a result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza”.
Many are disinclined to believe Israel’s claim that the explosion was caused by a rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) group. This scepticism had been fuelled by contradictions between Israel’s immediate and later responses.
Chris Gunness, former spokesman of the UN relief agency in Palestine (UNRWA), said Israel’s denial that it was behind the attack on al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza that killed at least 500 people is not surprising. “When was the last time a homemade rocket from Gaza destroyed an entire building and killed 500 people? Of course, we have to await the outcome of the Israeli investigation into this incident,” Gunness told Al Jazeera, adding that Israel has a history of spreading disinformation, even against UN agencies.
“In 2014, Mark Regev [former Israeli PM spokesman] and the rest of the Israeli spin doctors wasted no time in putting out all sorts of disinformation about UNRWA,” Gunness said. “They put out a video live on American TV telling the world that there were militants firing rockets from UNRWA schools. These were all investigated by the UN and other agencies and they were all found to be complete nonsense.”
At 9:04pm, the Israeli army published a post blaming the strike on a misfired missile launched by PIJ: “From the analysis of the operational systems of the [Israeli army], an enemy rocket barrage was carried out towards Israel, which passed through the vicinity of the hospital when it was hit. According to intelligence information, from several sources we have, the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization is responsible for the failed shooting that hit the hospital.” it said.
The IDF post had been edited. An earlier version had included alleged video evidence. Aric Toler, a journalist on the visual investigations team at The New York Times, disputed the accuracy of the footage, noting that the time stamp indicated it had been recorded 40 minutes after the time of the explosion.
The Israeli army published a clip in which it claimed that a missile launched by the resistance deviated and fell on the hospital, but the clip shows that it intercepted the missile in the sky, and the explosion that occurred in the hospital was the result of a direct hit from another projectile. The fragments of the intercepted missile in the sky could not have caused this large explosion, and there are - according to the pictures - no thermal flames coming out of the projectile that fell on the hospital.
Tal Heinrich, a spokesperson for Netanyahu, who told CNN that the “[Israeli army] does not target hospitals”, adding, “We only target Hamas strongholds, arms depots and terror targets”. But in a statement issued on the night of the explosion, the World Health Organization (WHO) pointed out that there had actually been over 51 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza since the start of the conflict on October 7. Fifteen healthcare workers had been killed and 27 injured. The Israeli military itself had issued evacuation orders last week from 22 hospitals treating more than 2,000 patients in the Gaza Strip as it intensified its bombing campaign. A senior health official in Gaza told Al Jazeera that Israel had fired two artillery shells as a “warning” at al-Ahli Arab Hospital days before the explosion.
The Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustaf Barghouti, accused Israel of spreading lies in its account of the bombing of Baptist Hospital, to justify its commission of a “heinous war crime” and the killing of 500 people, most of them women and children. Barghouti explained that the Israelis admitted - in their first reaction - to bombing the Baptist Hospital under the pretext that fighters from the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) were hiding inside, then they were forced to change their story by accusing the Islamic Jihad Movement of bombing the hospital with a missile.
What confirmed the falsity of the Israeli story - adds the Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative - is that the type of shell that was used in the bombing is not owned by the Palestinian resistance, stressing that the American newspaper “The Wall Street Journal” revealed indicators that say that the shell that was used in the bombing is of an American type,
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the armed group named by Israel as behind the hospital carnage, denied it was responsible. “The Zionist enemy is trying hard to evade its responsibility for the brutal massacre committed by bombing the Baptist Arab National Hospital [al-Ahli Arab Hospital] in Gaza through [its] usual fabrication of lies … We therefore affirm the accusations put forward by the enemy are false and baseless.”
The State of Palestine’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in Geneva has sent a statement to media organisations challenging the veracity of comments from Israel after the Gaza hospital explosion that killed at least 471 people: “Anyone with experience monitoring previous Israeli military aggressions against the Palestinian population of Gaza, is appalled, though not surprised, by the wave of disinformation being spewed out by Israel’s propaganda machine regarding the targeting of the Baptist Al Ahli hospital in Gaza.
“For decades, every time Israel is accused of an atrocity, it resorts to the usual playbook to attempt to cover up its crime: First, it denies its involvement and says that the Palestinians did it to themselves. Then, it quietly admits to having perpetrated it but says that it was not intentional. Then, it claims to be ‘investigating’ the situation while counting on the international community to forget it ever happened. Then, at the next crime, rinse and repeat.
“No amount of PR or censorship will be able to cover up the colonial, apartheid nature of Israel, a State that continues to relentlessly commit war crimes and crimes against humanity against a besieged, occupied population,” it said.
The US bears the ultimate responsibility for a strike on a Gaza hospital that left hundreds dead, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said amid the ongoing hostilities between Palestinian militant groups and Israel. Writing on Telegram, Medvedev also weighed in on what he described as a “horrific attack” and “clearly a war crime.” “The final responsibility for it lies with those who cynically make money from wars… With those who thoughtlessly distribute colossal amounts of money for weapons to load its military-industrial complex with work and falsely proclaims their global mission to protect democratic values. The United States of America.” Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian called for humanity to unite globally against Israel following the “massacre of … innocent women and children” at Al-Ahli Hospital. “After the terrible crime of the Zionist regime in the bombing and massacre of more than a thousand innocent women and children in the…hospital the time has come for the global unity of humanity against this fake regime more hated than ISIS and its killing machine,” he wrote on social media. “Time is OVER!”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the incident as "the latest example of Israeli attacks devoid of the most basic human values”, while Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement called for a "day of rage against the enemy", blaming Israel for what it called a "massacre".
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi suggested that Israel can move Palestinians affected by the war to the Negev desert instead of requesting Egypt to host them. “There is the Negev desert in Israel. The Palestinians can be moved to Negev desert until they [Israel] do what they wish to do with the military operatives in the Gaza Strip before returning [the Palestinians] back,” the president said in the media address alongside visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“The whole concept of transferring Palestinian citizens from the Gaza Strip to Sinai is simply transferring the concept of fighting and resistance from Gaza to Sinai and in this fashion, Sinai will be a base for military operations against Israel,” Sisi said. “Israel will try to defend itself and in a similar fashion Israel will direct its military towards Egypt and Sinai."
“If the Palestinians are transferred to Egypt, the military operation initiated by Israel may last for years and years to come. In this case, Egypt will continue to bear the consequences and Sinai will be a base for operations against Israel and in this case, Egypt will be labelled as a base for terrorists,” he said. “The acts by Israel cutting power, water, electricity is a means to forcibly transfer Palestinians to the Sinai Peninsula, which we totally reject.”
Israel will not allow humanitarian supplies into Gaza from the Israeli side of the border but will not block aid coming from Egypt, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said. “In light of President Biden’s demand, Israel will not thwart humanitarian supplies from Egypt as long as it is only food, water and medicine for the civilian population in the southern Gaza Strip or moving there,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. It also said that Israel will not thwart humanitarian supplies from Egypt as long as these supplies do not reach Hamas. “Any supplies that reach Hamas will be thwarted,” the statement said.
Jordanian King Abdullah cancelled a summit with US President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi after the deadly Israeli air attack on Al-Ahli Hospital.
The targeting of al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza was a “hideous war massacre” that cannot be tolerated, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said. Abbas was in Jordan for a four-way meeting but pulled out following the attack on Tuesday night. Later, Jordan announced the cancellation of the summit with the US and Egyptian presidents. “In light of this calamity that occurred tonight, and out of concern for our people, I decided to cut short my visit and return to the homeland to be among my people in this great ordeal, and I agreed with the brothers in Jordan and Egypt to cancel the summit that was scheduled today in Amman with President Biden,” said Abbas. “We will not allow a new Nakba [catastrophe] in the 21st century, and we will not accept the displacement of our people again. Our people will remain steadfast in their homeland and will not leave, no matter the sacrifices.
After a meeting with Israel’s cabinet, Biden said the Israeli government has agreed to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, based on the “understanding that there will be inspections, and that aid should go to civilians, not Hamas”. Biden renewed his commitment to an elusive goal of creating a Palestinian state even as he offered robust support to Israel. “As hard as it is, we must keep pursuing peace, we must keep pursuing a path so that Israel and the Palestinian people can both live safely in security and dignity and in peace,” the US president said in his remarks from Tel Aviv. “For me, that means a two-state solution,” Biden said as he closed his solidarity visit to the country.
Biden departed Israel on Oct. 18 after a high-stakes diplomatic mission to demonstrate solidarity with Israel, but also to secure Israel’s commitment to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and deliver a personal warning to exercise restraint. It is unusual for an American president to openly visit a country at war, and such visits are often kept secret until arrival due to security concerns. This time, however, the Biden administration disclosed the itinerary in advance and televised the visit, an uncommon move widely interpreted as an effort by the United States to dissuade Israel from deploying ground troops in Gaza.
Arab leaders cancelled their meeting with Biden, which is embarrassing for the White House and represents a setback. Biden’s intention was to come and act as an honest broker and show more support for Israel, which he has done since shortly after the Hamas attack. He also aimed to urge the Israelis to exercise caution in their operations in Gaza to minimise the humanitarian impact.
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