Gaza City, March 7 (RHC)-- Less than two weeks after launching its genocide on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military committed one of the most heinous atrocities in modern history. On October 18th a huge blast rocked the Al-Ahli hospital compound in Gaza, which was packed with thousands of Palestinians seeking shelter from the Israeli strikes.
According to Palestinian health officials, more than 470 people were killed in that incident. Most of the victims were defenseless civilians who had taken shelter at the hospital and its surrounding areas. At the time they had no idea that the Israeli regime might target hospitals.
Hospitals and clinics have special protections under international law and the deliberate targeting of these facilities is a clear violation of these principles.
As usual, the Israeli army first denied that it was behind the attack.
Subsequently the regime and its Western allies, including the United States and Canada, claimed that the explosion was caused by an errant rocket fired by the armed group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. However, independent investigations by various media outlets have debunked this propaganda.
The New York Times conducted a thorough analysis of video footage from the night of October 17, live streamed by Al Jazeera Television, which clearly showed that the missile seen in the video, supposedly fired by Palestinian fighters, did not cause the explosion at the hospital. Instead, it detonated in the sky approximately two miles away.
It was in fact a missile fired by the Israeli military that caused the devastating explosion. "According to all feeds and videos analyzed this rocket was intercepted and was the last one launched from Gaza before the bombing of the hospital.
Five seconds after that interception and explosion in Gaza can be seen, followed two seconds later by a much larger explosion. As a result, the Al Jazeera digital investigations team found no grounds to the Israeli army claim that the strike on the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza was caused by a failed rocket launch."
Palestinian human rights groups and civil society organizations dismissed an HRW report on a strike against a hospital in Gaza City as ‘inconclusive’ and devoid of ‘definitive results and key evidence.’
But the al-Ahli hospital was not the last hospital targeted by the Israeli military during its onslaught in Gaza.
According to a report by Human Rights Watch in 2023, the Israeli military has repeatedly, and unlawfully, attacked medical facilities, personnel and transport, further destroying Gaza's healthcare system.
The report says that these attacks should be investigated as war crimes as they have violated international humanitarian law. Because every society has the right to have a health care system and that's why their health care system is protected by the Geneva Convention. And the Fourth Geneva Convention is utterly clear, has always been.
And that's why these attacks on healthcare that are so well documented, and the most extreme, the most brutal examples, are the situations like we have in Nasr medical complex now, where they are shooting and killing staff and patients inside.
And the situation we had in the West Bank, were they again, dressed up like doctors, fake doctors and relatives coming [to visit] and hid their weapons and went into this room and shot and killed this patient, who was actually immobilized, this Palestinian young man and his two companions; killed him, executed him and his two companions, under the disguise of being medical personnel.
Dr. Mads Gilbert, an Emergency Medicine Specialist, told reporters: "The reason why this is so serious, and why it is not stopped is so serious, is that it threatens the immunity of the healthcare system and the safe network, the safety network, that the health care system provides to people around the world."
