Claims of Hamas fighters in Gaza hospitals may have been exaggerated – senior ICC prosecutor
People inspect the ruins of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, 1 April 2024
Harry Davies reports in The Guardian on 11 Dec 2024:
Claims about the presence of Hamas fighters in hospitals in Gaza under siege by Israel’s military have been “grossly exaggerated”, a top prosecutor at the international criminal court (ICC) has said.
Andrew Cayley, who is leading the ICC’s Palestine investigation, questioned the reliability of claims about military activity in Gaza’s hospitals which have been made to justify Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities in the territory. Speaking at an event last week, Cayley provided a rare glimpse inside the ICC prosecutor office’s investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity by Israeli forces and Palestinian militants.
Cayley – who reports directly to the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan – is overseeing the inquiry which was launched in 2021 but accelerated after the Hamas-led 7 October attacks and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza.
Last month, Khan secured arrest warrants against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; the country’s former defence minister, Yoav Gallant; and Hamas’s military leader, Mohammed Deif, as part of the inquiry. Israel has claimed Deif was killed in a July airstrike, but the court has been unable to determine whether he is dead or alive.
The allegations against the three suspects are only one aspect of the investigation. Cayley’s team is continuing to examine a range of alleged crimes across the occupied Palestinian territories. ICC prosecutors are understood to have reviewed incidents in which hospitals have been damaged or destroyed in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.
According to the latest figures published by the World Health Organization (WHO), of the 35 hospitals in Gaza it has evaluated only 17 are described as “partially functioning”. Five are “fully damaged” and 13 are categorised as “non-functional”.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has repeatedly justified operations against medical facilities in Gaza with claims that they were being used by Hamas militants.