Israel is giving up a lot. Maybe too much? I’ve read the government is getting significant pressure to get the hostages back. The families understandably want their loved ones back at any cost.
CNN
I don’t think it’s that bad of a deal. The Palestinian prisoners being traded aren’t huge threats to Israeli security, and any hostages they can get back alive is a good thing. It doesn’t give Hamas much time to regroup, as the IDF effectively controls northern Gaza. We’ll see if if the deal gets carried out as agreed pretty soon. This deal only lasts as long as Hamas can release 10 hostages a day. They’ve already admitted they don’t hold all of the hostages or even know where they all are at this point, as some were actually taken and are being held by Palestinian civilians and criminal groups. It wasn’t just Hamas militia who carried out the Oct 7th attack, which is a subject that i think bears some discussion in the future but I’ll leave alone for now.
This is much too personal a snipe for MPSIMS. Avoid this sort of commentary. No warning issued for this yet.
RickJay
Moderator
Also “several other medical personnel”. For questioning by Bet Shin. He was not arrested at the hospital, but detained as he was moving south to evacuate.
Huh.
(I heard about it from Al Jazeera, but the article i linked has a lot more detail.)
The hospital director would most likely have knowledge of Hamas activities and the hostages being treated at the hospital.
This investigation will take awhile. I assume it will continue during the pause in fighting.
The people to track down would be the engineers who keep the hospital assets running. They will know the building and are probably Hamas operatives.
My understanding is that they want to ask him why he was so adamant that Hamas had never made use of the hospital when evidence on the ground and his own security footage say otherwise; and they want to find out whether he knows anything else about the fate of the hostages that he hasn’t shared so far.
More and more tunnels are being exposed under Al Shifa:
“No evidence of a headquarters” indeed 
Eta: another set of videos-
In other news, it seems like this ceasefire is actually going to happen, with Hamas expected to release 13 hostages tomorrow and up to 50 over the next few days (50 is the most Hamas has offered at any time and the pessimistic part of me worries that this is because 50 is all they have - both because some hostages died but also because many hostages were likely taken by other militant groups that Hamas has little real authority over).
If they do have access to more hostages, though, Israel apparently offered to extend the ceasefire by a day for as long as Hamas can keep releasing 10 hostages a day.
I haven’t posted about this previously because, again pessimistically, I suspected that something would fall apart and no hostages would be released. But it looks like this might really happen. That’s great news, and better than I suspected things would go.
In one of the tunnel videos, I saw what appeared to be a fifty gallon aquarium.
Do you suppose the hospital guy wants to talk to the Israelis, and being arrested is a cover? That brings up the question, do most people in Gaza side with hamas?
I didn’t see that in the videos I linked - do you have links to more?
It would greatly surprise me if that was the case. As director of a hospital, he would have many better channels to communicate with the Israelis if he wanted to.
Beyond that, I’m not sure how the director of this hospital is appointed, but I presume the Ministry of Health, which we established is controlled by Hamas, has at least some say in the matter.
While looking into it, I found allegations that this guy’s brother was a Hamas leader who was killed in 2004 by an IDF helicopter strike. I don’t know how reputable these claims are and will try to look into it further.
That’s a good point. After watching tunnel videos I did a search for basement toilets. Interfacing those with the sewer system would not be unnoticed.
Ok, this is the guy who is supposed to be his brother:
This is a facebook post by the Al Shifa doctor on the anniversary of the strike:
Note that even Al Jazeera calls these guys “Hamas Leaders”.
I think that confirms this guy’s Hamas ties and wonder if @Banquet_Bear would like to rethink his trust of this guy’s claims.
…the guys brother got killed in 2004. 19 years ago.
Meanwhile, the IDF have killed over 5000 children and shut down all of the hosptials in the north. If someone that died 19 years ago is all that it takes to be considered “tied to Hamas” then that puts the IDF strategy in perspective. By these standards, this makes everyone a target.
Because exactly what claims do you want me to be re-evaluating? Everything is pretty much as I said. Everybody has known the tunnel network existed. Many of them have been there since 1983. There still isn’t evidence of command and control bunkers. To lose protected status hospitals have to be used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy. There is no evidence of that here. The hospitals didn’t need to be shut down to access those tunnels. Al-Shifa should still be operating. So should all of the other hospitals in the north.
And if 19 years ago they had the ability to take out a Hamas leader in a precision strike on a car, then why did they bomb another UN school just today, killing 27 people? Has the technology gone backwards?
Perhaps they have intelligence that some terrorists were sheltering there.
…or perhaps they all had grandparents who were killed in an IDF strike 19 year ago. Which would obviously mean they were tied to Hamas.
His brother was a high ranking Hamas leader, but you’re welcome to continue minimizing that fact.
And you are disregarding actual evidence that Hamas was active at Al Shifa, because this guy whose brother was a Hamas leader said he’d never seen Hamas at the hospital, despite his own security footage showing Hamas at the hospital.
…so what?
Walk me through the logic here. Am I responsible for the crimes a family member may have done nearly 20 years ago? Are you advocating collective punishment? What is the point here? What fact am I minimizing?
Hamas are allowed to be treated at the hospital, Hamas were allowed to bring wounded people to the hospital. Neither of these things are enough to remove the protected status of the hospital.
And were you expecting the hospital director to be scrutinizing hours and hours of security footage? Because Gaza was under siege. To keep the hospitals going they constantly needed to source food, water, fuel, and care for a patient load orders of magnitude higher than normal. The doctors and healthcare workers barely slept. They ended up treating family, friends, watching them die. Many of them had their homes destroyed in the bombing campaign.
These were hospitals. And under the Geneva Conventions they should all still be up and running. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people have no access to healthcare. There is no reason for this. There is no excuse for this. A single hyperbolic statement made in extreme circumstances do not justify this.
What the heck are you talking about? What part of my post is this relevant to?
No, I simply don’t trust this guy when he says “nope, no Hamas here, never seen them”. I think he’s probably sympathetic to them, considering his FB post, and may well cover for them.
So when the IDF says they engaged Hamas at Al Shifa and this guy says “nuh-uh”, I don’t believe him, since the IDF has absolutely no reason to attack a hospital that doesn’t have Hamas fighting from it.
The most current tunnel videos are pretty convincing. One tunnel room had AC.
The time and effort to put them in makes me wonder if the tunnels were excavated first, covered over, and then the hospital was built.
Anyone know when the hospital openef?