Newly released internal Hamas communications show how the terror group allowed several humanitarian organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Doctors Without Borders, to set up shop in the same medical facilities Hamas fighters used as command centers. Those groups have condemned Israeli operations on Gazan hospitals without acknowledging that Hamas terrorists operate within them.
The ICRC “has chosen [to operate] in a wing inside Al-Shifa Hospital that is adjacent to the movement’s offices,” Hamas’ Ministry of Interior and National Security disclosed in highly sensitive internal communications in 2020. Doctors Without Borders, meanwhile, “chose the only room in Abu Yousef El-Najar Hospital that has a [safe] communication landline,” Hamas leaders wrote in Arabic-language documents recently declassified by Israel and published in English for the first time on Wednesday by the NGO Monitor watchdog group.
Doctors Without Borders’ French affiliate used a hospital facility belonging to “the positive’s activity,” Hamas noted in a reference to its Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. The communications identify at least 17 other international NGOs—including the World Health Organization, several Doctors Without Borders affiliates, and the Norwegian Aid Committee—as working in various Gaza medical installations under Hamas’s authority.
While supporters of Israel have long known that Hamas-run hospitals are, for all intents and purposes, terrorist command centers, the ICRC and Doctors Without Borders have refused to admit that is the case, even as they work within those very buildings.
The ICRC, for instance, has written that strikes on hospitals “cause death and destruction and jeopardize vital lifelines for patients who have few sanctuaries left,” adding in several statements that medical facilities in combat zones “must be respected and protected,” without noting that those medical facilities also serve as terrorist headquarters.
Doctors Without Borders, for its part, issued a report accusing Israel of “dismantling” Gaza’s health care infrastructure and condemning the Jewish state over its “violent incursions in health facilities.” Much like the ICRC, Doctors Without Borders did not acknowledge why Israel might want to conduct military operations in Hamas-controlled buildings.
For NGO Monitor president Gerald Steinberg, it is difficult to believe the nonprofit groups were unaware of Hamas’s use of medical facilities, even as many of them publicly criticized Israel for targeting the very civilian outposts in which the terror group embeds itself. Hamas makes clear in the documents that it exerts near-total control over Gaza’s humanitarian infrastructure and can choose who it allows to operate in the region.
“The evidence of complicity is blatant,” Steinberg said in a statement. “This document exposes the hypocrisy of supposedly humanitarian international organizations like the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and the Norwegian Aid Committee (NORWAC). While repeatedly echoing Hamas allegations and condemning Israel’s operations to end the exploitation of hospitals for terror, these groups clearly knew that Hamas exploited these facilities, and chose to remain silent.”
The terror group intentionally placed ICRC and Doctors Without Borders workers in the same civilian infrastructure it used in order to help hide its own presence and lend an air of legitimacy to the medical facilities, with most of the locations having terror “operations taking place in them.” The documents also show that Hamas described medical facilities in Gaza as places of “gathering for many commanders of the movement and the government in times of escalation.”
Placing humanitarian organizations in the same locations as terrorists, though, presented security concerns for Hamas.
“These facilities hold plenty of important information that can be utilized in security matters, and this is why it is important for hostile intelligence mechanisms to infiltrate the Ministry of Health [MoH],” the terror group wrote in a March 2020 warning to its members. “They regard the Ministry of Health as a treasure chest for intelligence, especially at times of war.”
Israel and its Western allies, a Hamas communication reads, had “shown a great interest” in medical facilities in Gaza, leading the terror group to caution its fighters against allowing nonprofit staff to come into contact with sensitive materials.
“Foreign presence in these facilities is considered important, and these [foreign intelligence] mechanisms cannot be negligent about this presence and using it for intelligence,” the terror group wrote in a security analysis. “All associations that grant these services are non-governmental associations, which makes using them [for security purposes] easier.”
Hamas worked to place NGO staff “outside the main building of the clinic or hospital and far away from [Hamas] movement’s locations and [only] following security approval” in order to avoid intelligence leaks.
“MoH allows medical delegations to move in specific places, such as the outpatient department, the specialized departments, and operations rooms, but it prohibits the delegation from going inside the hospital where it is located,” one Hamas message reads.
The terror group kept close watch on humanitarian staff after approving entry. Even after the terror group approved entry for humanitarian workers, it kept close watch on the staff, with “[Hamas] security personnel present with health delegations as they move from place to place,” according to another message.
NGO Monitor wrote in its report that the documents “expose a systematic Hamas strategy to militarize Gaza’s healthcare system, using hospitals and medical facilities as extensions of its military and security apparatus.”
Gaza’s numerous medical centers, the organization said, “are not merely spaces of treatment, but rather they serve as hubs for Hamas leadership, gathering points for operatives, safe zones for wounded terrorists, and locations for secure communications infrastructure.”
The ICRC came under intense scrutiny earlier this year after Hamas hostage release propaganda videos showed Red Cross staffers participating in ceremonies orchestrated by the terror group, which included gun-toting militants parading emaciated Israelis across a stage.
Shortly after the Washington Free Beacon reported on the mounting congressional outcry over the videos, an ICRC official approached the publication about advertising on the Free Beacon website and sponsoring the daily Morning Beacon newsletter.
