Venu Menon
Wellington, November 16,2023
Israel stepped up its siege of Gaza by moving tanks and troops into the compound of a hospital sheltering civilians.
The overnight ground operation carried out by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) on November 15 at the Al-Shifa hospital, the largest of six hospitals in Gaza city, where an estimated 2,000 displaced civilians have taken shelter alongside patients, marks a dangerous escalation of the conflict amid international calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
The BBC has quoted eye witnesses as saying Israeli commandos went from room to room at the hospital, including its basement, where Israel has claimed Hamas (which governs Gaza) runs a command and control centre in tunnels under the building, a charge denied by Hamas and hospital staff.
The Israeli raid on the hospital has mounted pressure for a ceasefire which, of itself, is a divisive subject that has polarised opinion between Western powers, such as the US and UK, and Arab nations.
For the first time since the outbreak of hostilities following the deadly October 7 incursion by Hamas into Israel, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages, Washington has relied on intelligence reports to openly back Israel on its claims about the tunnels under the Al-Shifa hospital.
But the White House has been careful about falling foul of the Geneva Convention and has called on Israel to protect civilian lives. “We don’t want to see a firefight in a hospital.”
But by backing Israel’s push on the hospital, the Biden Administration has signalled to Arab states, holding an emergency summit in the Saudi capital Riyadh, that the US is no longer a credible broker for peace in the region.
This throws up a leadership vacuum in the initiative for building an international consensus to bring about an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
There is also the troubling lack of an exit plan now that Israel has been given the green light by Washington to advance on the ground in Gaza.
Meanwhile, the Israeli embargo on fuel supply is hitting the aid effort in Gaza, with hospitals unable to run incubators and other medical equipment. UN relief agencies have also warned that the plight of the displaced population will worsen with the onset of heavy rain in Gaza.
Amidst growing international concern, the Israeli military claimed it had delivered incubators and baby food to the Al-Shifa hospital, where dozens of babies needed medical treatment, according to the BBC. But an aid agency was quoted as saying “incubators are not needed, fuel to power them is [needed].”
“Fuel has been used as a weapon of war in Gaza,” a UN spokesperson noted.
The discussion at the international level has now shifted to war crimes committed by both sides.
Sir Geoffrey Bindman, a British solicitor, told the BBC that the “International Criminal Court (ICC) was already investigating war crimes” committed in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Proportionality and protection of civilians will emerge as key areas of scrutiny. Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory air strikes would bring both combatants under the purview of a war crimes investigation in the future.
Israel’s description of civilian deaths as “collateral damage” in its fight to “dismantle the terror infrastructure” of Hamas will be weighed against the hit-and-run tactics adopted by Hamas in an asymmetrical war that has exposed it to the charge of using the civilian population as a “human shield.”
But the unarguable legacy of the Israeli military takeover of the Al-Shifa hospital is that the situation in Gaza will not return to status quo ante.
Any humanitarian ceasefire that is in the offing will be viewed as a precursor to restarting negotiations for a permanent and (thus far) elusive two-State solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington
