Two Palestinian terrorists under interrogation estimated that between 600 to 1,000 Hamas operatives are based in Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital. Nabeel Rajab Abed Shteivi, one of the captured terrorists who produced missiles for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said, “Shifa, or schools and places like that, are our shelters.” He revealed that Hamas controls Shifa’s buildings, saying, “You might see someone who doesn’t look like a nurse but is dressed in a nurse’s uniform.”
Hamas’s tactics are insidious. How could an organization so shamelessly hide behind vulnerable, sick, and injured hospital patients and caretakers? Yet Hamas not only is taking this approach now; it’s also continuing its long-established pattern of using human shields to attack Israel while placing innocent lives in the line of fire instead of themselves. The detainees’ testimonies give the IDF a good idea of the numbers of terrorists it will have to root out of the hospital, but, sadly, it should come as a surprise to no one that Hamas continues to brazenly hide behind civilians to attack Israel.
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