As international condemnation mounts over the Israeli military’s arrest late last month of the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, the Israeli military said on Tuesday that it had new evidence that militant groups had used the hospital as a command center.
The military released footage of what it said was an interrogation of one of the more than 240 militants it had arrested in raiding the hospital, saying it backed up Israel’s allegations that Hamas and other armed groups deliberately embed themselves in hospitals in violation of international law.
The New York Times was not able to independently verify the claims made in the video, or to determine the circumstances under which the detainee made the admission. Israel has detained many Gazans in Sde Teiman, an army base in southern Israel, where many have been held in demeaning conditions and in which former detainees described beatings and other abuse. The Israeli military has denied accusations of systematic abuse there.
The short clip the military released shows a young man who identifies himself as Anas Muhammad Faiz al-Sharif, 21, explaining that he had been a cleaning supervisor at Kamal Adwan Hospital, as well as a member of Hamas’s military wing since 2021. In the video, he says that operatives from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups operated out of the hospital, using it for weapons transfers and distribution, patrols and as an observation post, because they considered it a safe haven that could not be directly targeted by the Israeli military.
Hospitals are protected under international law, even if they provide medical care for combatants, but if they are used for other acts that are “harmful to the enemy,” that can make them legitimate targets for military action. Still, the military must weigh the expected military advantage of any action against the expected harm to civilians, and civilian harm must not be disproportional.
Israel has raided Kamal Adwan before and attacked areas in the vicinity of the hospital. In October, the military detained or expelled most of the hospital’s staff members during a raid that lasted for days. Before his arrest in December, the hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, said that the hospital had been attacked many times in recent months.
Hamas did not respond to requests for comment on the Israeli claims about its operations.
Doctors and medical workers around the world, including in Israel, have condemned the raid on Kamal Adwan, and particularly the arrest of Dr. Abu Safiya. The hospital had been a main provider of medical care for the thousands of people who have remained in northern Gaza through an intensive Israeli military campaign over the last three months to quell what Israel says has been a Hamas resurgence there.
Dr. Abu Safiya was vocal in his protests of Israeli military activity throughout the war and frequently shined a light on the suffering in northern Gaza, in recent months especially.
In the days after the raid, the Israeli military confirmed the arrest of Dr. Abu Safiya, saying he was being questioned as a suspect and accusing him of being a member of Hamas. Because the group has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007, all kinds of public services, including health care, are to varying degrees entwined with Hamas.
Physicians for Human Rights Israel, an Israeli nonprofit group, said on Sunday that the Israeli military had refused the group’s efforts to send a lawyer to see Dr. Abu Safiya to evaluate his state and the conditions of his detention. “Despite our urgent requests to send an attorney, the military says he’s barred from lawyer visits” until Jan. 10, the group said.
The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Saturday that Kamal Adwan Hospital remains “completely out of function” and that the organization has “received no updates on the safety and well-being of its director” since his detention. “We continue to urge Israel to release him,” Dr. Tedros said, adding that “attacks on hospitals and health professionals must end.”
On Monday, medical workers calling for the release of Dr. Abu Safiya and an end to attacks on hospitals and health workers in Gaza protested in cities around the United States and the world, including San Francisco, New York, Boston, Quebec and London. The rallies were organized by Doctors Against Genocide, a global coalition of health care workers based in Michigan and founded in 2023, which has demanded that Dr. Abu Safiya and his colleagues be released.
But the Israeli military has long insisted that Hamas and other militant groups have deliberately embedded themselves among civilians in violation of international law, and there is no indication that its campaign in Gaza will let up, despite international outrage. Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the military’s chief of staff, in remarks to soldiers in northern Gaza on Monday, said of Hamas: “They understand that this is becoming unbearable. And I’m telling you — we won’t stop.”
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