Israel destroyed al-Shifa Hospital to accelerate social collapse in Gaza
People inspect the ruins of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, 1 April 2024
Faris Giacaman writes in Mondoweiss on 2 April 2024:
The fall of al-Shifa Hospital will be remembered as one of the most pivotal moments in Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza — not for the unbridled annihilationism it displayed, but because it offered a unique window into the real reason Israel decided to systematically dismantle Gaza’s hospitals.
Hospitals in Gaza during times of war have not only served as places for the treatment of the wounded and the sick but have become pivotal social institutions, housing a microcosm of Gaza’s entire civic order. They became hubs for journalists and human rights defenders, offered space for Gaza’s Civil Defense teams to organize and coordinate rescue efforts, became a base of operations for Gaza’s police force, and hosted tens of thousands of displaced refugees seeking shelter from the bombardment. Hospitals became all those things because they were the last remaining civilian institutions that were supposed to enjoy a modicum of protection from the war.
In other words, they housed all the trappings of what makes a society function. In lieu of dismantling Gaza’s resistance infrastructure, a goal that remains elusive for the Israeli army, one of Israel’s war aims in Gaza has been to engineer social collapse.
Normalizing attacks on hospitals
It started with Israel’s first assault on al-Shifa on November 15. In the days leading up to the invasion, the hospital had been placed under siege, as medical staff and doctors were shot through windows and in the hospital’s main courtyard. When others rushed out to try and save them, they were shot down, too, until no one dared leave the buildings. The injured were left to bleed out and die, and then to rot and be eaten by stray animals. When the Israeli army entered, it cleared out the hospital of its staff, patients, and displaced refugees. Israeli propaganda began to flood the media with images of weapons stuffed behind an MRI machine, one of the few flimsy pieces of “evidence” alleging the hospital’s use as a military “command-and-control center.”
But despite the fact that Israel’s claims about al-Shifa turned out to be baseless, the invasion set an important precedent for what was considered acceptable conduct throughout the war. What was previously unthinkable now became commonplace, setting the stage for what was to come.
Facilitating social collapse
After the army withdrew from parts of northern Gaza toward the end of the year, including the area surrounding al-Shifa, medical staff and patients returned to the hospital. Al-Shifa quickly resumed its status as a hub for displaced persons and civil society actors. But with the start of the new year, famine and starvation began to set in.