Prior to the recent military operation in Gaza City and the concurrent evacuation of the civilian population to prevent harm, patients from Al-Ahli Hospital were transferred last week to the Indonesian Hospital. This relocation, which was not called for in the evacuation notices given to Gaza residents that day, emptied Al-Ahli Hospital of dozens of patients due to an independent evacuation decision.
Security officials completely denied the necessity of evacuating the hospital and emphasized that IDF personnel had conveyed messages to Gaza's health system and hospital administrators stating that the hospital complex did not need to be evacuated.
This incident is part of a growing trend where Hamas tries to involve civilian institutions in military activities. For instance, during an airstrike on Tuesday against a Hamas military wing operative who participated in the October 7 massacre in the border area, reports emerged of 30 civilians injured near the Al-Awda school in Khan Younis, located close to the strike site. Official statements from Hamas's media office and the Turkish Foreign Ministry claimed the strike hit a shelter, while IDF officials clarified that it was not a shelter.
Earlier this month, during another evacuation of the population in Gaza, the Gaza Health Ministry ordered the independent evacuation of hundreds of patients from the European Hospital, ultimately transferring all patients and medical staff to various hospitals in the Gaza Strip. Concurrent with the evacuation, looters arrived, stealing equipment from the hospital and damaging parts of it. Here too, IDF personnel had communicated beforehand that the hospital did not need to be evacuated.
Despite these evacuations, the state of hospitals in Gaza remains stable and functional. There are 16 active hospitals in the Gaza Strip providing adequate medical services as part of the humanitarian efforts led by Major General Ghassan Alian, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, to maintain the legitimacy of IDF operations in the eyes of the international community and courts in The Hague.
"There is a growing trend of exploiting and using civilian institutions as leverage in a legitimacy battle against Israel, disrupting the functioning of the health system, particularly hospitals," a security official emphasizes. "This is yet another cynical exploitation of the population, likely carried out by terrorist organizations in the Strip, including Hamas."