Gaza's Al-Shifa Medical Complex: A Targeted Lifeline Erased by Israeli Forces

After withdrawing from where they entered from the western side and redeploying around the compound, the Israeli army stormed Al-Shifa Medical Complex from its southern entrances on Thursday morning. They entered new sections and buildings under the pretext of searching for militants, weapons, and Israeli prisoners.

The new invasion operation did not differ from the first. The displaced, the wounded, and the medical teams were besieged. 
According to media reports, some of them were attacked, and others, especially the elderly, were expelled outside the complex, left to find their way in a city that has turned into a city of death.

In the history of Israel's wars on the Gaza Strip, targeting hospitals has always been a top priority. They bombard them, besiege them, and seek to disable them to cut off one of the Palestinians' life arteries by depriving them of treatment, medicine, and emergency care.

It is not new for Al-Shifa Medical Complex to remain Israel's primary target among the sector's hospitals. Israel has claimed for years that the headquarters of the Al-Qassam Brigades is located under Al-Shifa Hospital in tunnels that extend along its area. The same pretext was repeated in today's war.

Three days after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood began, its army started targeting the complex with airstrikes. When the ground operation started, the Israeli army's vehicles and tanks advanced towards it, closing in from different directions on November 11 while continuing to shell its surroundings and conduct raids, killing anyone inside.

When the complex, along with those inside it, reached their last breaths, Israeli tanks stormed its entrances, and Israeli soldiers entered its various sections. 

Al-Shifa Complex has strategic geographic and social significance; it is located at the crossroads of the western part of the central region in Gaza City, at the intersection of Az al-Din al-Qassam Street and al-Wehda Street, two major streets in the province, in the area near the Gaza Strip's beaches.

Its area is 45,000 square meters, and it currently houses three hospitals. It is the oldest hospital in the occupied territories, established in 1946 before the establishment of the State of Israel. Initially, it was a military barracks belonging to the British army.

Upon the occupation of the Gaza Strip, it fell under Israeli authorities after 1967, which continued to expand it in the 1980s. It remained that way until the Palestinian Authority took control of it after the Oslo Accords before the Hamas government took over Gaza in 2007.

With its control today and the elimination of the largest health system, Israel has ended the Palestinians' last hope of escaping death and displacement from the northern Gaza Strip.