Shifa Hospital as symbol of irresolvable contradictions

The war between Israel and Hamas has been going on for more than a month now. Many innocent civilians were killed and injured. A huge number of intermediaries are trying to stop this madness, but so far these efforts have yielded no results. This article looks into a very controversial symbol of this brutal confrontation.

The most vocal facility spoken about in Gaza today is the Shifa Hospital, located in central Gaza. It was built in 1946 by the British but took on its modern look in the 1980s when Israeli architects converted the old barracks building into a modern hospital with a thousand beds. The hospital was rebuilt according to the standards of the Israeli Tel Hashomer with all the most modern equipment at Israeli expense. As in other Israeli hospitals, the architects provided underground levels in case of war with Egypt. It was then that Hamas turned into its headquarters and from there they began to drill tunnels deeper into it.

Today it is known that under the hospital there is a three-level Hamas infrastructure, the first floor of which is technical, the second - barracks, warehouses, production facilities, and the third - the headquarters of the leaders. Hamas spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build this fortress with highways, wells, generators, ventilation, and so on.

As soon as Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, shootouts began on the territory of the hospital between Hamas and Fatah terrorists, apparently for the right to use the underground infrastructure. Hamas not only threw its political and terrorist opponents off the roofs but also fired 600 doctors who “worked for Fatah”. In total, more than 600 qualified medical personnel - doctors, caregivers, and nurses - were fired for political reasons. The hospital was left without staff and existed for some time only thanks to international assistance.

Hamas then began a long project of digging tunnels under the hospital. Israel has carried out several large and several medium-sized operations against Hamas but has never stormed Shifa and its underground city.

It is amazing that despite the endless war, terrorist attacks, tens of thousands of rockets fired at Israel over all these years, Israeli doctors continued to come to the Shifa Hospital in Gaza to perform operations and consult patients. Israeli surgeons performed 50 surgeries every month at Shifa and consulted thousands of Gazans saving their lives. The last operations were carried out just a few weeks before the monstrous terrorist attack of October 7, planned in the basements of this very hospital.

Today, Israeli defense forces storm Gaza, leaving the Shifa hospital without power and water. Despite calls from the international community, Israel does not intend to retreat and this was confirmed by Prime Minister Netanyahu.

"The fighting against Hamas continues both on the ground and underground, but only in certain places, for a certain period of time - a few hours here, a few hours there. We are doing everything we can to reduce the number of civilian casualties, we want to ensure the safe passage of civilians from the battle zone, and we encourage them to leave, even as Hamas tries to keep them as human shields. We don't want to rule Gaza. We do not seek to occupy Gaza, but we seek to give it and us a better future throughout the Middle East. And for this, it is necessary to defeat Hamas. I set goals, but not a timetable because it might take time.”

Time will tell whether Israel will cope with the task, but we see that the creation of a Palestinian state is becoming more pressing than ever for all players in the regional political arena. Attempts to create a Palestinian state have been going on for many years, but it is the current confrontation between Israel and Hamas that could become the starting point for fateful shifts on the political map of the Middle East.

Shifa Hospital is the main oxymoron of today - a center for providing medical care and at the same time, the center of a terrorist organization that attacked Israel a month ago. This is a symbol of the contradictions of human nature, capable of both destroying and creating with equal inspiration.