Al-Ahli Arab Hospital
 Al-Ahli Arab Hospital(Hospital)    | |
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| Gaza hospital destroyed - allegedly - by Israel on 17 October 2023 |
The al-Ahli Arab Hospital is a hospital in Gaza City. Its headquarters are located in the Zeitoun neighbourhood in the south of the city, and is managed by the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem. It is considered one of the oldest hospitals in the city, having been founded in 1882. In Arabic, its name means "The Arab People's Hospital".[1]
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History
The hospital has been in operation since 1882 and was founded by the Church Mission Society of the Church of England. Later, the hospital was managed between 1954 and 1982 by the Medical Mission of the Southern Baptist Church, known then as the Baptist Hospital. Since 1980, the hospital has been run by the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem. It is supported by international charities such as Embrace the Middle East.
2023 Gaza-Israel conflict
Rocket strike at cancer treatment centre
At 7:30 p.m. EEST on 14 October 2023, the hospital's Diagnostic Cancer Treatment Centre was damaged by rockets, causing four hospital staff members to be injured and severely damaging two of its upper floors, with the mammography and ultrasound departments affected the most.
Explosion
Three days later, on the evening of 17 October 2023, an explosion occurred in the courtyard which was housing thousands of displaced people as a result of the conflict. This explosion led to the deaths of some 500 Palestinians and the injury of more than 600 others, according to preliminary tolls by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Post-atrocity routine
Palestinian officials blamed the explosion on one of the many Israeli bombs dropped on Gaza since the October 2023 Gaza−Israel conflict began on October 7.
Israel, meanwhile, has predictably claimed that a misfired Palestinian rocket was responsible for the massacre at the hospital.
Israel’s response to the hospital bombing – a war crime under international law – is consistent with its usual post-atrocity routine.
The routine goes something like this: Israel commits a human rights atrocity, immediately denies having anything to do with it, says it has solid evidence that Palestinians committed the crime, and then just waits to see if someone manages to prove what really happened. If it eventually becomes clear that Israel did indeed carry out the atrocity, it silently accepts responsibility, but by then, the world’s focus has already moved on to other matters.
Israel performed this exact routine just last year, after it murdered Palestinian-American journalist and Al Jazeera veteran Shireen Abu Akleh.[2]
References
This page imported content from Wikipedia on 18 October 2023.Wikipedia is not affiliated with Wikispooks. Original page source here
