Terror shield

On October 17, 2023, an explosion took place in the parking lot in the courtyard of al-Ahli Arab Hospital, located in Gaza City, amid the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, resulting in an unverified number of fatalities and injured. Around a thousand displaced Palestinians were taking refuge at the hospital. The hospital is owned and run by the Anglican Church. Canon Richard Sewell, the dean of St George’s College in Jerusalem, told the BBC that about 1,000 displaced people were sheltering in the courtyard when it was hit, and about 600 patients and staff were inside the building. HAMAS claimed that hundreds were killed when Israeli jets pounded the hospital. Following the explosion and accusation by HAMAS, Arab and Muslim countries lost no time in condemning and blaming Israel for the hospital explosion. For HAMAS the hospital explosion served to erase its October 7 murderous attacks on Israeli civilians including abuse and rape of women, shooting of babies in their cradles besides taking around 200 women and infants as hostages. Amidst the outrage against the hospital explosion, several countries who had backed Israel, adopted a cautious approach by calling for restraint. HAMAS’ accusations were easily accepted by most countries mainly since Israel has been targeting buildings in Gaza used by HAMAS to launch rocket attacks. However, the USA, UK and most western nations backed Israel’s claim that HAMAS was responsible for the hospital explosion. According to a study reported by BBC, three experts who studied videos of the night attack as well as post-explosion photographs, stated that the scene of the explosion was not consistent with what could be expected from a typical Israeli air strike with a large munitions. J Andres Gannon, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, in the US, stated that videos showing flashes in the sky likely indicate the projectile was a rocket with an engine that overheated and stopped working and not a bomb from an Israeli air force jet. It would be pertinent to understand the issue from facts about HAMAS. In 2021, HAMAS launched a barrage of 4500 rockets into Israeli territory clearly aimed at civilian target. A majority of the launch sites in the HAMAS controlled Gaza Strip were from various floors of high rise apartment buildings. Again in 2023 and to be precise, October 7 2023, HAMAS unleashed a similar barrage of around 7000 rockets from Gaza on Israel and all these were from residential areas. The explanation of why Israeli pounded scores of high rise buildings is because these were in reality, operational posts for HAMAS. Since the 2014 Gaza war, Hamas has been expanding its network of tunnels beneath crowded civilian areas in Gaza. Called the “Metro” by the IDF, these tunnels transport troops and weapons throughout Gaza and under civilian neighbourhoods .As per the rules of engagements, such tunnels constitute legitimate military targets as recognized by international humanitarian law as these contribute substantively to the tactical fighting efforts of HAMAS. On May 12, 2021, UN Special Coordinator Tor Wennesland told the UN Security Council, “Hamas and other militants’ indiscriminate launching of rockets and mortars from highly populated civilian neighbourhoods into civilian population centres in Israel violates international humanitarian law, is unacceptable, and has to stop immediately.” The world must accept that Israel unlike HAMAS, is not a terrorist state and people in Gaza are suffering because they are being used as human shields by HAMAS.