IDF to Hamas Terrorists Holed Up in Shifa Hospital: Surrender, or We’re Coming for You

GAZA ENVELOPE, Israel — The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued a simple message Wednesday to Hamas terrorists holed up in Shifa Hospital: surrender.

Hamas has used Shifa to hide its leaders, to torture political dissidents, and to conduct other military activities for more than a decade. The terror organization is also thought to have built an extensive network of underground tunnels underneath the hospital. The reason: they know that Israel would never deliberately launch an airstrike on a hospital.

Hospitals have protected status under the law of armed conflict. But abusing hospitals as Hamas does — and using the patients, doctors, and staff as human shields — is a severe violation of international law. Even hospitals can lose their protected status if they are used as military installations; however, it is necessary to evacuate them, to the extent possible, before attacking them.

That is exactly what Israel has done in the last week, as it fought in the area around Shifa Hospital. It refrained from targeting the hospital; it provided safe passage on the east side of the hospital for people who wanted to leave; it helped with evacuations; it provided fuel to the hospital (which Hamas would not let it use); and it brought incubators to assist babies in neonatal units.

Now, Israel is closing in on the hospital, where Hamas leaders are thought to be hiding — and where some of the 240 hostages seized by Hamas and other terrorist groups may be imprisoned. Though the Biden administration has been publicly skeptical of Israel’s intention to enter the hospital, the IDF is pressing ahead, and has prepared special battle plans for the sensitive site.

In a statement Wednesday morning, the IDF said:

Based on intelligence information and an operational necessity, IDF forces are carrying out a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa Hospital.

The IDF is conducting a ground operation in Gaza to defeat Hamas and rescue our hostages. Israel is at war with Hamas, not with the civilians in Gaza.

The IDF forces include medical teams and Arabic speakers, who have undergone specified training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment, with the intent that no harm is caused to the civilians being used by Hamas as human shields. In recent weeks, the IDF has publicly warned time and again that Hamas’ continued military use of the Shifa hospital jeopardizes its protected status under international law, and enabled ample time to stop this unlawful abuse of the hospital. Yesterday, the IDF conveyed to the relevant authorities in Gaza once again that all military activities within the hospital must cease within 12 hours. Unfortunately, it did not.

The IDF has also facilitated wide-scale evacuations of the hospital and maintained regular dialogue with hospital authorities.

We call upon all Hamas terrorists present in the hospital to surrender.

President Joe Biden said Tuesday that Shifa Hospital “must be protected, and that Israel should take “less intrusive action.” But National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan tried to walk back those comments — first saying that Israel “has to confront” the threat without “assaulting hospitals in firefights that could put innocent people who are getting lifesaving medical care in the crossfire.”

“There are not easy answers to this question,” he said.

Later, when confronted with the president’s own remarks, Sullivan said that what Biden meant was that “we do not want to see firefights in hospitals,” and that Israel had expressed similar sentiments.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.