at Al-Chifa Hospital, the Israeli army is facing a false success?

It becomes the Israeli military’s longest “targeted operation” in its war against Hamas. They have been fighting in the Al-Chifa hospital in the Gaza Strip for ten days. The second attack on this hospital complex, the largest and oldest in the Palestinian enclave, since October 7.

About a thousand Israeli soldiers, backed by tanks, entered the buildings of Al-Chifa on Monday, March 18, for an operation to “clean up” the presence of fighters from Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad.

“Tactical Success”

This second attack should have been quick because the Israeli army already announced in November, during the first attack, that it had “emptied” the area of ​​Hamas presence. This first operation was also supposed to allow Israel to block a maze of tunnels under a hospital serving Palestinian fighters.

Not only is the new Israeli attack dragging on, but the fighting has spread to the surrounding areas of the giant hospital complex. In ten days, Hamas was able to carry out 70 attacks on Israeli forces outside and inside the hospital, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank that works with the center. Critical Threats conflict monitoring platform to provide daily summaries of events in the war between Israel and Hamas.

Despite the intense fighting in the supposedly “cleared” area, the Israeli army presents the operation as a success. She emphasizes that she was able to “eliminate dozens” of enemy fighters and locate new “infrastructure and weapons storage facilities” in the hospital.

“From a tactical point of view, we can say it’s a success,” confirms Veronika Poniscjakova, a specialist in international security issues and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the University of Portsmouth. “The Israeli army indicated that it would concentrate its efforts on another area – the refugee camp in the center of the Gaza Strip – and when the Hamas fighters returned to the hospital complex, the Israeli soldiers, who were ready, closed in. network on them,” explains Ahron Bregman, a specialist in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at King’s College London.

A trap of sorts that also “probably allowed Israel to recover information about its enemy, as suggested by images and video of interrogations released by the Israeli military,” notes Omri Brinner, an analyst and expert on Middle East geopolitics at the International Security Studies Team ( ITSS) Verona, an international collective of experts on international security issues.

A war of images

Progress appears to be slow as the Israeli military tries as much as possible to avoid the media backlash associated with the military operation launched at the hospital. Last November, fighting launched by Israel in Al-Chifa caused the deaths of more than 20 patients, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. The attack also led to a health disaster for Gazans, deprived of the enclave’s most important hospital complex. Washington has very openly expressed concern to its Israeli ally about the “human cost of hospital surgery”.

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Israel’s operation in Al-Chifa again attracted international attention. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), described conditions at the hospital as “absolutely inhumane” for patients and medical staff.

But “Israel was much smarter this time in the way it presented the operation to the world,” points out Clive Jones, an Israel and Middle East specialist at Durham University. The military is using drone footage of the exchange of fire and photos of the discovery of the weapons cache to “try to convince international opinion that they had legitimate reasons to return to fight in this hospital,” the expert added.

Israel also needs to prove its ability to carry out this type of highly sensitive operation with as few civilian casualties as possible. Indeed, “if the war in Iraq [de 2003, NDLR] proved one thing, that as soon as the army leaves an area [américaine à l’époque, israélienne à Gaza, NDLR]”, the insurgents are looking to get back there,” Ahron Bregman underlines. In other words, “we have to expect that Hamas will do the same thing in other hospitals, but also in schools or refugee camps where there is a civilian population,” notes Shahin Modarres, an independent expert on international security and the Middle East.

The Israeli military is spending time in Al-Chifa to show Hamas “that it does not hesitate to fight in areas that are considered sensitive,” confirms Omri Brinner. While trying to prove to the international community that he knows that.

A strategic failure?

But if this operation looks like “an operational success, it is also a strategic failure for Israel”, according to Clive Jones. After the fighting in northern Gaza at the beginning of the war and the first visit to the Al-Chifa hospital, “the fact that so many Hamas fighters managed to return to such a sensitive place as this hospital complex must worry the Israeli General Staff”, assures Veronika Poniscjakova.

This shows that Hamas can afford to carry out guerrilla operations aimed at “frustrating the Israeli soldiers, forcing them to withdraw, while trying to distract them long enough in the hope that international pressure will force Israel to accept a truce,” emphasizes Shahin Modarres.

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The fact that Hamas adopted this strategy was certainly expected, according to experts interviewed by France 24. But “the intensity of the fighting around the hospital shows that Israel may have underestimated the capacity of its enemy to quickly regroup in the north”, specifies Clive Jones.

For this expert, the return to the Al-Chifa hospital “illustrates the political error in the Israeli plan which consists of advancing into Gaza without thinking about the powers that will be established to ensure the stability of the areas where the Israeli army is not ‘ not “. And these latter can be less and less everywhere: “we must not forget that they have been gradually withdrawing their soldiers lately”, adds Clive Jones.

“It’s a classic case of the chicken and the egg,” says Veronika Ponišćakova. According to her, Israel will now have to choose whether its priority is “to establish a government in an area where the army is absent in order to have a free hand or to deal with Hamas forces in the south in order to have a freer mind.” political solution. In this regard, the fighting in Al-Chifa also proves, these same experts believe, that the Israeli army is still far from achieving its main goal: the destruction of Hamas.