© ShahBlogger. FILE PHOTO: Smoke rises as displaced Palestinians take shelter at Al Shifa hospital, amid the continued battle between Hamas and Israel, in Gaza Metropolis, November 8, 2023. REUTERS/Doaa Rouqa/File Photograph
By Stephen Farrell
LONDON (ShahBlogger) – Al Shifa Hospital, hit by missiles on Friday, is the biggest within the 360-sq-km Gaza Strip.
In current weeks Israel has mentioned Hamas militants have hidden command centres and tunnels beneath it and different hospitals.
Hamas, well being authorities and Shifa administrators have denied that the group is concealing army infrastructure in or below the advanced and have mentioned they’d welcome a world inspection.
WHAT IS SHIFA?
Shifa is a sprawling advanced of buildings and courtyards a number of hundred metres from Gaza Metropolis’s small fishing port, sandwiched between Seashore refugee camp and the town’s Rimal neighbourhood.
Its title comes from the Arabic phrase “therapeutic” – frequent for hospitals within the Center East.
ITS HISTORY
It was in-built 1946 throughout British rule, two years earlier than Britain withdrew from Palestine. It survived the Egyptian invasion in 1948 and twenty years of Egyptian army rule.
In 1967, Israel captured and occupied the Gaza Strip and Shifa remained a focus – lengthy earlier than Hamas – the place many Palestinians have been taken throughout clashes with Israeli troops.
In 1971, the Instances of London reported a gun battle between a Palestinian militant who hid below a mattress within the nurses’ quarters and an Israeli military patrol that was looking out the hospital.
In 1987, through the opening week of the First Intifada in opposition to Israeli occupation, The New York Instances reported a confrontation when a number of hundred Palestinians outdoors Shifa threw rocks at Israeli troopers whereas shouting, “Come and kill us all or get out!”
REDESIGN AND ENLARGEMENT
Through the Eighties, the hospital advanced was revamped and redesigned by Israeli architects, in accordance with Israeli information reviews.
Zvi Elhyani, founding father of the Israel Structure Archive, wrote on Ynet on Nov. 9: “With assistance from American assist, Israel launched into a venture to revamp and enlarge the hospital advanced. This enterprise additionally concerned the set up of a subterranean concrete ground. In a grim twist, this underground space has been appropriated in recent times by Hamas,” he wrote. with out offering proof of the declare.
CONTROL PASSES TO HAMAS
In 1994, Palestine Liberation Group (PLO) chief Yasser Arafat’s Fatah-dominated safety forces saluted the Palestinian flag when it was raised over the hospital when Palestinians have been granted restricted self-autonomy in Gaza through the Oslo peace course of.
Efficient management over it handed from the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority to Hamas after the Islamist group’s shock 2006 election victory, and 2007 army takeover of Gaza.
Through the energy wrestle between Fatah and Hamas constructing as much as that takeover, fighters from either side have been handled at Shifa and different hospitals, below a type of truce that neither would hurt the opposite facet’s wounded.
Israel has beforehand claimed that Hamas used underground areas in Shifa to cover – it mentioned as a lot throughout a 2008-2009 warfare through which greater than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis have been killed. It was not attainable to confirm the claims.
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