This article is about the early days of the siege of Al Shifa Hospital by the Israeli army and when they started arresting journalists who were camped there

1. Al Shifa Raid: Israel Interrogates Gaza Journalists
The fate of 80 people including a group of journalists, including Al Jazeera reporter,
hangs in the balance as they are taken for Interrogation by the Israeli army.
By Dr Marwan Asmar
The life of journalists in the Gaza Strip has been a dangerous and a deadly one since
Israel launched its war on the enclave after 7 October. Many were deliberately targeted,
killed and injured by Israeli snipers and bombers. So far 133 Palestinian journalists were
killed.
But this figure is likely to increase vastly upward with the latest Israeli onslaught on Al
Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Israeli soldiers arrested at least 80 people, including doctors,
medical staff and a group of journalists which they took away to an unknown
destination.
Interrogation
On such journalist is Ismail Al Ghoul, TV satellite reporter for Al Jazeera. He was arrested
together with his crew with reports that he was beaten before being taken away no
doubt for interrogation. Up till then, journalists had taken Al Shifa as their place of
residence mainly because of its convenience.
It was in the center of the Strip and easier to move around and cover the rapid news
taken place as a result of the incessant Israeli strikes. From Al Shifa, you could travel to
the north of the Gaza Strip, to the east, west, south and off course, the refugee camps
sprawling in the mainly central areas of Gaza and which had taken a battering in this
one-sided war.
At the time of the arrests as well, the Israeli army smashed the broadcasting equipment
of the journalists stationed there. In Al Shifa, media workers could also power their
broadcasting equipment in an enclave where electricity had long been cut off over the
whole of Gaza by the Israelis.
At present nobody knows the whereabouts of the journalists except to say the first thing
the Israeli soldiers did was to round them up and strip them of their clothes, a practice
followed by the Israelis over the past six months.
This is the fourth raid on the hospital by the Israeli army in as many months with the
first being taken place last November in search of the infamous “Hamas headquarter”
underneath the grounds of the hospital and which was nowhere to be found.

2. However, Al Shifa continued to be targeted. The latest raid on the hospital ground was a
result of an Israeli intelligence tip off that Hamas operatives were in the vicinity and
hence it was reported that fierce fighting ensued which resulted in one soldier killed as
admitted by the Israeli army.
The raid on the hospital which was made in the early hours of Monday morning resulted
in fire exchange throughout the day with Israeli soldiers with tanks surrounding the
hospital and calling for military backup from the air bombing different places
surrounding the once-proud medical complex but now lies in tatters thanks to Israeli
bombing. According to Israeli army estimates, the military operations resulted in 20
people killed.
One woman was seen crying hysterically after seeing her house in a building flattened
by an Israeli missile. She had left earlier ago to look for food to feed her children. When
she came back the building was gone with probably everyone inside it under the rubble.
Because of what happened to Al Shifa previously, it no longer functioned as a medical
facility. It offers the bare minimum of medical care to those who come it and doesn’t
have the medicines and pharmaceuticals because of the Israel siege and the grip of
Zionist army.
However, according to estimates it has about 30,000 displaced persons in the hospital
grounds who came to it for shelter from Israeli bombing and missiles. Anyone who
moved was shot at by an Israeli sniper who was carefully placed in one of the buildings
of the hospital.
In this last raid, the soldiers quickly began ordering all of the people – excluding those it
took in custody – to make their way further down south, naming these places such as Al
Mawasi to the west of Khan Younis, erroneously, as safe areas. But these safe areas
including the far-southern city of Rafah, are frequently bombed from the air with a
possible full-scale Israeli troop invasion, soon.
Today no one knows what the fate of those arrested will be. No one knows what will
happen to Ismail Al Ghoul and the other journalists. But the Israeli army keeps saying
this would only be a short operation and will leave the medical facility soon. But we are
yet to see.
Marwan Asmar is an Amman-based journalist