The mysteries of Hamas’s Shifa Hospital left unresolved - analysis

There are at least three mysteries regarding Israel’s handling and intelligence regarding Hamas’s abuse of Shifa Hospital in Gaza which remain unresolved to date after an Israeli withdrawal from the medical center on the eve of the temporary ceasefire.

The first is about the Hamas leaders (see below regarding how high their ranks were) and around 200 terrorist forces which Israel ultimately either allowed to flee or failed to prevent from fleeing.

Although at first the IDF and the government could claim that maybe they did not know that Hamas’s officials and around 200 of its forces would leave, the Jerusalem Post has now had repeated confirmations that there was little expectation by the time Shaldag forces penetrated the complex that most of them would not have fled.

At most, there were concerns that possibly a small number of Hamas terrorists left behind might resist, attempt an ambush, and lead to bloodshed within the hospital’s facilities, including harming Palestinian civilians.

Uncovering the mystery

Based on these concerns, the Shaldag forces did penetrate from a side area blowing through a wall and entering facilities in a manner which would give the advantage of surprise if there were still a small number of Hamas terrorists left behind.

Israeli soldiers make their way towards Israel's border with Gaza, amid the ongoing ground invasion against Hamas, in southern Israel, November 8, 2023 (credit: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS)

However, previously, there were hints by defense sources that Hamas terrorists most likely left by fading into a crowd of around 40,000 Palestinian civilians who were evacuated from Shifa in the immediate days before Shaldag penetrated.

More recently, the Post has learned that top Hamas officials might have left Shifa long before the multi-day siege, possibly shortly after the IDF started its invasion of northern Gaza. Also, the Post has been presented with more significant evidence that hostages and bodies were held at Shifa, specifically in the Outpatient Building, and were smuggled out.

The method and degree of covering up certain Hamas interests in weapons at Shifa testified to having abandoned certain areas a longer period of time before Shaldag’s penetration than a few mere days.

As the Shifa story has played out, there have also been signs that the IDF and the government may have even preferred that top Hamas officials and most of its 200 or so terrorists would leave before it arrived. This might even include knowingly allowing hostages or bodies to be removed.

In fact, this may have even been an official or unofficial high-level decision.

The purpose of such a decision would have been to avoid a hospital gunfight and bloodbath which could harm Israel’s legitimacy for continuing the war as well as genuine concern for Palestinian civilians there, and concern for large numbers of IDF soldiers who might die in such a gunfight while “pulling their punches” around the civilians.

Regarding the hostages or bodies, the government and IDF may have concluded that attacking with them nearby could only end in tragedy.

Whether this decision was the right one or not will need to wait until the government and IDF come clear more about what they knew and when.

This ties into a broader question: has the government and IDF systematically avoided attacks in areas where they suspected Hamas was holding hostages or bodies?

During the first week of the war, a senior diplomatic source and top IDF officials all said that military forces would not pull their punches with Hamas, and would not allow the hostage situation to prevent dismantling Hamas (back then the phrase was annihilation.)

But in addition to the IDF not stopping or allowing Hamas to move hostages or bodies from Shifa, on Sunday hostages were returned to Israel from northern Gaza, in Shejaiya.

Until now, the IDF story has been that they did not attack Shejaiya in order to first take control of Hamas’s made symbols of power, with the idea that surrounding some of the terror group’s tough forces in Shejaiya would be easier after the rest of northern Gaza was taken.

What if another motivation was that the government and the IDF knew hostages were there and did not want to come anywhere near them for fear of what Hamas would do to the hostages?

Possible conclusions

This, along with the Shifa story, would help make sense of the fact that the IDF has taken over 80% or more of northern Gaza, including all central Hamas’s headquarters, while failing to arrest or kill more than one-third of Hamas’s forces of 30,000, and maybe even less.

Maybe the hostage mission has been overriding or at least delaying the dismantling Hamas mission all along.

Finally, there are now disputes between different defense sources about which Hamas officials were at Shifa.

Testimony from Hamas terrorists to the Shin Bet and some IDF officials have said that Hamas’s leadership had been there, or at least its highest military leaders.

Some officials making this claim compared the Shifa tunnels to tunnels of Hamas battalion (mid-level) commanders elsewhere saying that the Shifa tunnels were fancier in a class of their own.

This would also be consistent with most defense officials’ statements about who was hiding at Shifa from 2014 until the eve of the current invasion of Gaza.

On the flip side, other IDF officials, including public spokespeople, have said that Shifa housed battalion commanders, but not higher level leaders.

This could be true, or it could be that if a decision, passive or active, was made to let such higher level leaders escape with hostages, there would be a desire to deemphasize associating higher level Hamas leaders with having been there.

The government and IDF’s odd moves of refusing Hamas’s demand to withdraw from Shifa in public, but then quietly withdrawing, including demolishing some, but not all of the tunnels (there was insufficient time to excavate all of them) will likely leave many of these mysteries open for some time.