Hamas turns Gaza’s hospitals into ‘Hamaspitals’

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are now directing a surgical strike at the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza, targeting Hamas terrorists and commanders who were hiding therein. They engaged in a firefight with one of its leaders and killed him. They also killed 90 terrorists and arrested hundreds of suspects.

Hamas deliberately employs an unlawful strategy that puts Israel in an impossible situation. Its commanders take over hospitals and use them to hide and protect its terrorists, rockets, guns and tunnels. It has used hospitals to hold its hostages, and also to hide the bodies of hostages it killed, because it knows Israel is determined to retrieve and return their bodies.

According to the Jerusalem Post, “hundreds of terrorists and suspected terrorists have been arrested from inside the [Nasser] hospital, including terrorists who took part in the Oct. 7 massacre.” Some of these terrorists were “posing as medical staff.”

Hamas has turned ordinary hospitals like Al Shifa and Nasser into “Hamaspitals!” This is a serious war crime that endangers the life of real patients and doctors.

There is now evidence that in addition to using existing hospitals to shield their terrorist activities, Hamas has been building new medical facilities, schools and mosques on top of existing tunnels in order to protect their tunnel infrastructure from Israeli attack.

This strategy constitutes the serious war crimes of using civilians as human shields, as well as intermingling civilian and military facilities. The victims of these war crimes are Palestinian civilians as well as Israeli soldiers and civilians.

The international community condemns Israel for sending its soldiers into these Hamaspitals, even in carefully controlled raids calculated to achieve legitimate military goals. Some U.S. officials and media have also criticized Israel for entering hospitals.

But what should a democratic country that operates under the rule of law do when its enemy violates the most important rule of war that prohibits the use of hospitals for military purposes? Should it simply allow Hamas to continue to use these hospitals to endanger Israeli soldiers and civilians without fear of intervention? Would that not encourage Hamas to continue and perhaps expand its unlawful military exploitation of such medical facilities?

If Israel is permitted to take military action to protect its legitimate interests — as it should be — how should it go about doing so in the setting of working hospitals? Obviously, it should take care to prevent harm to civilian patients and staff.

But it should be permitted to search the hospital for terrorists, hostages, weapons, tunnels, and other military items. It should be able to arrest, question, search and detain suspected Hamas collaborators. It should also maintain control over the area to assure that it can no longer be used to protect terrorists and facilitate attacks against Israelis.

Hamas cannot be allowed to get away with its double-edged strategy of turning hospitals into military facilities and then complaining when some patients who they have deployed as human shields are injured or die. The blame — legal, moral and political — for these deaths must be placed on Hamas for its war crime in deliberately placing civilians in harm’s way.

Israel, on the other hand, should not be prevented from pursuing its legitimate military goals by legitimate military means. These include entering hospital grounds and neutralizing military and terrorist facilities and personnel. In some cases it should include shutting down the facility and transferring patients to safe hospitals.

In its recent raid on Nasser Hospital, the IDF found, in addition to numerous terrorists, weapons used to murder Israelis, as well as medicine that was supposed to be given to the hostages.

Israel must make all reasonable efforts to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and it must comply with the rules of proportionality. These rules authorize military actions that risk killing some civilians, as long as these civilian deaths are proportional to the value of the military targets. Israel goes to great length — even endangering its own soldiers — to follow these rules.

Rules of engagement vary with the circumstances of particular wars and battles. In general, hospitals should be out of bounds for military attacks. But when terrorists deliberately employ a strategy of exploiting and abusing the protected status of hospitals, the other side must be free to adapt their rules to protect their soldiers and civilians against attacks from these Hamaspitals. That is what Israel is doing and should continue to do.

So let us stop blaming Israel for Hamas’ crimes.

By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ and ANDREW STEIN