In a scene that seems to repeat the scenario of the Storming of the Shifa Medical Complex,

 the vicinity of the Indonesian Hospital in the Gaza Strip is witnessing heavy fighting between

 Hamas and the Israeli army, does Israel intend to storm more hospitals inside the Gaza Strip.

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Edited by| Tony Wild

 

Humanity  section -  CJ journalist

  

Gaza Strip - November,20,2023

 

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"The occupation is besieging the Indonesian hospital and we are afraid that it will repeat

 what it did to the Shifa compound," said Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra,

 who was evacuated after a heavy bombing campaign and now controlled by Israeli forces.

 For its part, the Israeli military says that it continues to "expand" its operations in the

 northern Gaza Strip.

Experts are likely to repeat the scenario of breaking into Al-Shifa in all hospitals inside the

 Strip, allegedly exploited by Hamas as centers of operations, while the Israeli army

 continues to expand its operations inside the Strip.

At least 12 Palestinians were killed and several others were injured in an Israeli

bombardment targeting the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported .

Wafa added that the Israeli shelling on the Indonesian Hospital led to deaths and injuries,

 noting that the Israeli forces also targeted it with live bullets and directly, and artillery shells

 were fired in its vicinity.

Local sources said that the Israeli army also shelled the vicinity of the al-Odah hospital in the

 northern Gaza Strip.

Palestinian political science professor Azzam Shaath says that the political level in Israel and

 its Prime Minister Netanyahu are particularly concerned - for personal reasons-with

 perpetuating the military aggression on the Gaza Strip, and after breaking into Shifa without

 achieving any of the operational goals of his forces on the ground, Israel will work to move

 to the next phase, which is the expansion of Gaza City and its North, and the displacement

 of its population towards the south of the Strip, before moving to the second phase of the

 ground offensive, which is expected to extend to the center and south of the Strip and by

 the same mechanism .

This experience may be generalized with Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis city in the southern

 Gaza Strip, and this is what the statements of some Israeli officials show after the large-

scale operation to storm Shifa Hospital, which did not achieve the goals of Israel and its

 military forces deployed in the Gaza Strip.

Shaath believes that the most it can achieve for Israel is to displace as many displaced

 Palestinian civilians as possible, and cause humanitarian disasters for the sick and injured

 and the medical staff, without achieving the Israeli government's goals.

He stressed that Israel " lost humanely and morally after the invasion of Shifa in the political

 and legal sense and in terms of the decline in the popularity of the Israeli government and

 its president among the Israeli society, which is waiting for the export of the image of

 victory from Gaza, albeit at the expense of unarmed Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, which is nearing its second month, Israel has accused

 Hamas of using hospitals to hide its headquarters and facilities, and this accusation has

been repeated repeatedly by Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari, who said in several

 press conferences that"Hamas uses hospitals for terrorist purposes," adding that the

 movement "uses hospitals to hide its war machine.

Hamas has repeatedly denied the Israeli accusations and issued a statement on the fifth of

this month, calling on the United Nations to form an international committee to visit

 hospitals in the Gaza Strip and verify Israel's claims about its use of resistance sites, and

Hamas politburo member, Ezzat al-Rishq, described the Israeli accusations as "fallacies and

 baseless lies".

According to Shaath, all Israeli objectives have failed so far inside the Gaza Strip, the Israeli

 forces, after their ground invasion in the cities of Gaza and northern Gaza, made a decision

 to storm Shifa hospital under the pretext that the Resistance Leadership is conducting its

 operations from inside, and that the Israeli prisoners are in tunnels for the Qassam Brigades

 below the hospital, and therefore they can be freed through the storming operation.

The political and military levels in Israel also promoted this narrative for a long time, even

 before the events of the seventh of October, to the extent that the American administration

 was convinced of the Israeli version, and Israel wanted to get a mandate to storm the

 hospital, but the Storming of the hospital did not achieve any of its goals for Israel in terms

 of reaching the Resistance Leadership and the release of Israeli prisoners.

"The Israeli army entered the war without any clear plan,"says Daniel Levy, head of the US

 and Middle East project, which specializes in research and study of the Palestinian issue and

 the Arab-Israeli conflict.

He added that even today, the objectives of the military operation inside the Gaza Strip

 seem scattered, and it is impossible to say for sure the future steps of the Israeli forces, but

 it can be said that in general they will focus on finding and destroying Hamas

 ' infrastructure, as was announced since the beginning of the crisis.

But Israel is facing severe international pressure today, according to levy, especially from the

 allies, led by the United States and European countries, which supported Tel Aviv at the

 beginning, but today they feel very embarrassed, especially with the high toll of civilian

 casualties and the unnecessary storming of hospitals.