We Need A UN Force At Al-Shifa Hospital STAT
Neither Hamas nor the IDF is completely trustworthy in this situation. A third party is the only way to save those inside from certain death.
There is a showdown taking place over Gaza City’s main hospital, al-Shifa, where the patient situation is catastrophic. Doctors describe bodies rotting outside and in, and that a mass grave is being dug in the courtyard for some 120 casualties. Surgeries without anesthesia or other painkillers harken back to the American Civil War. The neonatal critical care unit is a casualty of the siege by Israel, and the hospital’s solar panels were damaged a week ago by a nearby artillery strike fired by the IDF at an alleged Hamas outpost. Israel insists al-Shifa contains entrances to a vast underground bunker complex for Hamas, a claim the Gaza Health Ministry rejects completely. The Health Ministry itself, though, has stopped counting deaths. They simply have no way to do so, a director says, because of spotty communications, no power, and an inability to go around without attracting the attention of Israeli drones and, potentially, shelling to follow.
The IDF says they’ve offered portable incubators and an evacuation route, the doctors inside the hospital say that there’s no practical way to take it without a ceasefire. Reporting from the Washington Post drives this point home succinctly: “Conditions in the south, in fact, are far from safe: Bombardment has continued, hospital generators there have stopped working as well, while potable water is also in short supply.” The United Nations has seen two of its facilities near the waterfront shelled by Israeli naval vessels, despite having repeatedly communicated to both Hamas and the IDF what buildings were theirs, so the staff who’ve stayed to try and save the lives of Palestinians could be relatively safe. Hamas kept their word, the UN says, while Israel has not. The long-fraught relationship between the UN and Israel is not helped by this, neither is the siege, which is forcing the UN to shut down its operations inside Gaza for lack of supplies and safe passage.
So what then of al-Shifa? In a best case scenario, they are absolutely telling the truth—no Hamas bunkers, no fighters blending into the crowds of dead and dying. In a worst-case scenario, Hamas does indeed have a massive complex 30 feet down. Regardless, one thing is crystal clear: infants struggling to live, many born premature to mothers killed by Israeli airstrikes or caught in crossfire, are laying on regular hospital beds, eight to a bed, being warmed through manual means. Pediatric cancer patients too weak to leave are barely holding on. No running water, no food, no power, is leaving a situation where the death toll in Gaza may double within days if everyone inside perishes. Hamas says it’d release 75 hostages for a five-day ceasefire and aid to the hospital. Israel says it wants 100 hostages. The fact that either side wants to treat this appalling catastrophe, which was fully preventable, as a bargaining chip is disgusting.
This is why I firmly believe there should be an emergency UN Security Council resolution to muster a battalion of combat medics and soldiers from a nation like Sweden to helicopter in at a declared time and begin evacuation of the hospital. Gaza is SMALL. It is not a long flight to a field hospital on the Israeli side of the wall or the Egyptian side. This would be justified and wholly within the UN’s power, and the fact that nobody has even considered this sucks, to put it bluntly. For that matter, we, America, as Israel’s great ally, could publicly tell both sides that we intend to evacuate that hospital, using a specific route in and out, to a hospital ship with Sixth Fleet. We absolutely have the power to do that and, quite honestly, it may be the only way to stop a slow-motion massacre.
And for anyone who says, well, what about Hamas? What about what they might do? It’s pretty simple. 10,000 innocent people crammed in that hospital deserve our best efforts. If Hamas takes a route so craven that they blow up medical evacuation helicopters, it would be suicide. Not in the immediate sense, but in the “not a single one of you will live” sense. Support for Palestinians would suffer greatly. I think they’re smart enough to know what’s in their best interests, and even if they don’t, what good are our claims of morality if we don’t back them up with tangible action? Good people do what’s right because it’s right, not because they get something out of it.