Ramallah: Human Rights and Democracy Media Center- SHAMS, asserts that targeting and incursion of Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, is a moral decline and egregious military failure and insistence on the ongoing genocide crime against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In this regard, the Israeli forces raided the Hospital on March 18, 2024, accompanied by heavy shooting toward civilians, patients’ companions, and the displaced persons who sought shelter in the buildings and yards of the Compound. The raid is still going on until now, leading to the killing of more than 80 citizens (males/ females) in addition to the arresting of more than 300 persons of those who were in the compound. The Israeli soldiers assaulted the medical teams and pushed hundreds of displaced persons to evacuate the place immediately. The current attack is not the first attack on Al Shifa Hospital where in the previous invasions, the Israeli army did not find anything though they searched the compound and entered all its facilities. Despite these invasions, the Israeli army could not prove any of the false claims utilized to justify the brutal bloody attacks against civilians and medical teams inside the compound. The current incursion of Al Shifa Medical Compound indicates the deficit within the Israeli military doctrine where regular armies, which respect the military badge, do not commit such crimes and they fight according to war laws/ regulations and face-to-face confrontation in the field, with no attacks on patients, wounded, civilians, and hospitals.
SHAMS Center affirms that raiding Al Shifa Hospital and committing that horrible crime there and attacking civilians and medical teams is a manifestation of the Israeli racial, fascist, and bloody ideology. Additionally, it interprets another military failure of the Israeli army, which failed in achieving any military achievement on the ground. The Israeli army failed to achieve any of the objectives declared for the aggression on the Gaza Strip and so, it attacked civilians and civic objects to record false achievements to be presented to the public opinion in the occupation’s state. The Israeli army is attacking civilians to target the popular incubator of the resistance and a false attempt to record victory by targeting civilians, patients, wounded, children, women, and displaced civilians gathered in Al Shifa Medical Compound.
SHAMS Center deplores the international silence in front of the Israeli crimes committed against Palestinians through murdering, displacing, and demolishing the infrastructure and civic objects, especially hospitals and medical centers, alongside with violating the entire set of human and moral ethics. Most of the states remained silent in front of the Israeli crimes though these states keep arguing for the necessity to obligate other countries to respect human rights, and basic freedoms, and enhance the liberal democratic principles and the values of human rights. However, it is clear that these states apply double standards in dealing with the previous values and principles where dealing with global issues (according to the strategies of these states), is based on the nationality of the victim or the perpetrator but not the human, legal, and moral values of these principles.
SHAMS Center affirms that raiding
Al Shifa Hospital and targeting medical teams as well as targeting the civilian
displaced persons gathered there, is a profound violation of the international
law and the international humanitarian law. In particular, the crime of the
Israeli occupation violates Article 18 of Geneva Fourth Convention (dated
12/8/1948). The mentioned Article stipulates: “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”. Furthermore, it violates Article 15
of the same Convention, which affirms the protection of: “Civilian persons who
take no part in hostilities, and who, while they reside in the zones, perform
no work of a military character”. Likewise, it violates Article 24 of the
Geneva First Convention (1949), which states: “Medical
personnel exclusively engaged in the search for, or the collection, transport
or treatment of the wounded or sick, or in the prevention of disease, staff
exclusively engaged in the administration of medical units and establishments,
as well as chaplains attached to the armed forces, shall be respected
and protected in all circumstances”.
Israel is also violating the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2675/
1970, which affirmed the necessity to neutralize the hospitals from hostile
attacks during armed conflicts where the “vicinity of the hospital or any other
shelter should not be a place for the military attacks”. Attacking Al Shifa
Medical Compound is a crime according to Article 8 of the Rome Statute (1998),
which states: “Intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to
religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments,
hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they
are not military objectives, are war crimes”.
SHAMS Center urges the states signatories to the Geneva Conventions and Hague Law, World Health Organization, International Committee of the Red Cross, Un Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the OPT, Medicines Without Borders Organization, Amnesty International, states that have diplomatic missions in the Occupation State, governmental and non-governmental organizations, to exert pressure on the occupation’s state to stop its attacks on civilians and demolishing the civic objects. There is a need to press on the Occupation State to stop, in particular, its attacks against hospitals and medical centers and obligate it to respect the international law and international human rights law and neutralize civilians and civic objects within the genocide war that is committed against civilians in the Gaza Strip.