Since Israel launched its full-scale war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, rights groups, watchdogs, and activists have routinely pointed to bombings and other attacks that have hit hospitals. In turn, Israel has claimed these strikes were justified because Hamas and other armed groups have taken refuge in civilian infrastructure like medical facilities.
A new Human Rights Watch report looks at what happens to patients and staffs inside hospitals when Israeli forces take over such facilities. The watchdog concluded that Israeli forces have “caused deaths and unnecessary suffering of Palestinian patients while occupying hospitals” in the besieged enclave.
In other words, according to HRW, Israeli forces have undertaken actions in hospitals that amount to war crimes.
Drawing on testimony from witnesses at three different hospitals, HRW explained that Israeli military forces had forced patients to go without electricity, food, and medicine. They had also “shot civilians,” “mistreated health workers,” and “deliberately destroyed medical facilities and equipment.” On top of that, Israeli troops had carried out forced evacuations that both left hospitals out of operations and doomed patients to “grave risk.”
The report comes on the heels of Israel’s decision to abandon a ceasefire that came into effect two months earlier and launch a far-reaching series of attacks across the Strip, killing hundreds.
Quoted in the report, HRW’s Bill Van Esveld said Israeli soldiers had deployed “deadly cruelty” against Palestinian hospital patients. “The Israeli military’s denial of water and electricity left sick and wounded people to die,” he added, “while soldiers mistreated and forcibly displaced patients and health workers, and damaged and destroyed hospitals.”
To make matters more alarming still, HRW says that Israeli authorities have not publicly announced the opening of any investigations into alleged war crimes and other accusations of international law violations.
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Ansam al-Sharif had already lost a leg in an Israeli airstrike, but when Israeli troops occupied the facility, she reportedly witnessed the deaths of four other patients. “We stayed there for four days with no food, water, or medicines,” she told the rights group.
Another witness, a 23-year-old woman, recounted the Israeli takeover of al-Shifa Hospital. The woman, who was seven months pregnant, had already seen an Israeli munition kill her husband, mother-in-law, and another relative. The strike left her with an amputated leg.
On Nov. 15, two days after she gave birth to a stillborn girl, Israeli forces raided and occupied the facility, according to the report. She told the watchdog that Israeli soldiers fired “a sound [flash-bang] grenade and a smoke grenade through the windows to force people to go downstairs.”
Israeli military later interrogated some Palestinian staff and patients at al-Shifa, HRW said. Such incidents, the report suggested, have been routine throughout the war on Gaza.
Whenever Israeli forces forcibly evacuated hospitals, per HRW, they “only rarely” transferred patients to other medical facilities. “After Israeli forces evacuated some hospital buildings,” the report added, “they unlawfully burned or destroyed them.”
Palestinian journalists and human rights observers have documented similar Israeli actions throughout the war. The HRW report added that attacking hospitals and medical workers violate international humanitarian law.
On top of that, the watchdog noted, “A force that has seized a hospital must actively facilitate the delivery of medical supplies and equipment and not deprive the hospital of other vital resources such as electricity or water.”
