Good morning. In the last few hours, Israeli soldiers have stormed Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital. Israel says that the raid, which is still underway, is a “precise and targeted operation against Hamas”, which it accuses of operating a command centre beneath the medical facility, a claim Hamas denies.
The attack at al-Shifa is militarily significant – but it is also taking place in the arena of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that has drawn huge global attention, with conditions rapidly deteriorating on the site since the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) surrounded it last week. And so whether Israel is able to carry out the pinpoint attack it has promised is likely to be a critical test of the international community’s view of its conduct of the war.
