On Tuesday evening local time, the Israeli army bombed the Anglican-run al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City. The direct hit of the hospital’s main courtyard was catastrophic, massacring hundreds of people. The official death toll is yet to be confirmed, but estimates range between 500-1000 dead. The Gaza health ministry says that number may continue to climb.
Thousands of people had flocked to the hospital in northern Gaza to seek refuge from the Israeli bombardment, and many of them were camped out in the hospital courtyard, where the strike reportedly took place. Israel had attacked the same hospital over the past weekendinjuring four and causing thousands to flee.
According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, hundreds of people still remain under the rubble in the aftermath of Tuesday’s hospital bombing.
The massacre has sent shockwaves throughout Palestine and the Arab world. Within hours of the airstrike, thousands of protesters took to the streets across the West Bank, including Ramallah, Tulkarem, Jenin, Nablus, and Hebron. Protesters clashed with Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces and riot police — most notably Ramallah and Jenin — in an expression of rage at the PA’s collaborationism with the occupier in light of the genocidal Israeli onslaught on Gaza.
In Ramallah, protesters gathered at Al-Manarah Square and proceeded toward Al-Muqata’a, the PA’s main headquarters, but clashed with riot police before reaching the compound. Chants of “the people want to overthrow the President” could be heard as PA security forces launched tear gas canisters and stun grenades to disperse the protesters. Initial eyewitness reports have also asserted that the PA forces fired live ammunition at the protesters, who threw stones at the PA forces.
In Jenin, PA forces also fired live ammunition at protesters, and seven injuries have so far been reported, according to local media sources.
As of the time of writing, protests and clashes were still ongoing.
In the wake of the massacre, PA President Mahmoud Abbas canceled his upcoming meeting with President Biden set to take place on Wednesday in Jordan. PLO Secretary Hussein al-Sheikh announced Abbas’s decision on X (formerly Twitter), stating that the PA President had called an emergency meeting for the PA leadership for that night. Later in the evening, Jordan canceled the summit altogether, which was supposed to have included the U.S. president, Abbas, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.
Across Arab capitals, massive protests also broke out condemning the massacre, while protesters in Jordan attempted to storm the Israeli embassy. The attack also garnered condemnation from several Arab states, including states with diplomatic ties with Israel, including Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.
Israeli and U.S. response
In the aftermath of the massacre, Israel denied responsibility and claimed that the explosion was the result of an errant Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) missile without offering evidence.
Israel had initially related video via its social media channels purporting to offer evidence that it was a PIJ munition, but then deleted it when the timestamps on its video did not match the publicly known details of the event.
While there was speculation that the attack might alter Joe Biden’s plans to visit the region on Wednesday, there are reports that the president is en route at the time of this writing.
While the White House maintained “radio silence” around the attack, a Pentagon spokesperson answered questions on the record and seemed to cast blame at Hamas. During a briefing with the press, Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said she would not speculate on the cause of the explosion at the hospital but also claimed, without evidence,
“Hamas is the one putting Palestinians, or those in Gaza, at great risk. I mean, they are putting their command and control units inside hospitals, inside areas where there are innocent civilians. So the fact that they have set up these command centers at these hospitals just shows the brutality they are willing to engage on, that they are willing to use civilians to mask their operations but also to see them as casualties.”
When pressed on a follow-up question as to why the U.S. is offering weapons to a country, Israel, with a well-known track record of war crimes, Singh simply replied that the U.S. expects Israel, as a democracy, to follow the laws of war.
International outrage
In the hours after the massacre, numerous humanitarian and diplomatic figures condemned the targeting of the hospital.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “it’s not acceptable to hit a hospital.” Russia and the UAE requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in light of the hospital bombing.
In a statement, the World Health Organization condemned the bombing, noting that the Ahli Baptist Hospital was one of 20 hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip that the Israeli government had given evacuation orders but that “the order for evacuation has been impossible to carry out given the current insecurity, critical condition of many patients, and lack of ambulances, staff, health system bed capacity, and alternative shelter for those displaced.”
Doctors Without Borders called the bombing a “massacre” in a statement.
“Nothing justifies this shocking attack on a hospital and its many patients and health workers, as well as the people who sought shelter there,” the organization said. “Hospitals are not a target. This bloodshed must stop. Enough is enough.”
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