Topline
President Joe Biden told reporters on Monday that Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza “must be protected” and said he hopes and expects there to be “less intrusive action” in the area moving forward, as fighting has reached the outside of the hospital in recent days.
Key Facts
Biden’s comment comes after the Al-Shifa hospital — Gaza’s largest medical facility — ran out of the supplies needed to continue functioning as a hospital over the weekend, according to World Health Organization officials who have described the situation as “dire and perilous.”
Israel has said it believes Hamas is using Al-Shifa’s patients and doctors as human shields and is operating a command post beneath the hospital, which hasn’t had power for days and “is not functioning as a hospital anymore,” according to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
While both Hamas and hospital staff have denied the claim, CNN reported Monday that a U.S. official with knowledge of American intelligence said Hamas does have a command node beneath the hospital; the CIA declined to comment on the claim to CNN.
The director-general of the Hamas-controlled health ministry, Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, told CNN Monday that staff at the hospital didn’t follow an evacuation order that came Friday, according to the Times of Israel, because about 700 patients who are still inside without care would die.
On Sunday, Israel said it left fuel near the hospital to allow it to continue to operate and prevent deaths, but that Hamas didn’t allow the hospital to take the fuel, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Crucial Quote
“It’s my hope and expectation that there will be less intrusive action relative to the hospital,” Biden told reporters. “We’re in contact with the Israelis…The hospital must be protected.”
Big Number
12. That’s at least how many people have died due to the lack of power at the Al-Shifa hospital, the New York Times reported, citing the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Key Background
As Israeli forces close in on the area surrounding it, medical staff and officials at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza told the New York Times that patients are dying and dead bodies are decomposing because the hospital doesn’t have the resources it needs to operate. At a hospital in Northern Gaza, the ongoing war interrupted an effort to evacuate patients and staff, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which said its “staff (is) trapped (inside) with patients and the wounded, without electricity, water, or food.” The attacks near hospitals come the week after Israel announced it would begin daily four-hour humanitarian pauses in fighting to allow for civilians to be evacuated, though the pauses have not stopped calls for a ceasefire. In a press briefing Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said international partners are starting to ask for a ceasefire, saying “the pressure is not very high, but it is on the rise,” NBC News reported.
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