Israel Did Not Provide Any Evidence Justifying the Lifting of Legal Protection from Al-Shifa Hospital

Human Rights Watch stated today, Thursday, that "the images published by Israel of weapons that its soldiers claim to have found inside the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip are not sufficient to justify the removal of the hospital's status as protected under the laws of war." Louis Charbonneau, the director of the United Nations division at Human Rights Watch, told Reuters: "Hospitals have special protection under international humanitarian law; doctors, nurses, ambulances, and other hospital workers must be allowed to perform their duties, and patients must be protected." He added: "Hospitals lose that protection only if it can be proven that harmful acts have been carried out from within their buildings. The Israeli government has not provided any evidence of that."