Do Israeli images of arms prove Al Shifa Hamas command centre claims?
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00:00 terrorism expert Waseem Nasser has been looking at some of that footage released
00:04 by the Israeli army from Al-Shifa Hospital and he's with me now to tell us
00:08 a bit more. Waseem, before the raid Israel said that hospital was the
00:14 beating heart of Hamas operations in Gaza. From what the IDF has shown the
00:21 world so far, is that true? Well actually let us see first where the hospital is.
00:27 On a map we can see that it's in the middle of the battleground today. So the
00:32 red areas are the areas that Israeli operations are ongoing now as we
00:39 speak and you see Al-Shifa Hospital it's in the middle of that area.
00:43 But when you look at the footage that was released by the Israelis
00:47 themselves, well actually there's nothing much on that footage. We see a
00:53 few Kalashnikovs, we're going to look at it maybe now, where the spokesman, Israeli
00:57 spokesman talks. Here we see an IRM machine, we see some ammunition behind
01:03 it but nothing that gets even close to a command and control operation room.
01:09 And there's nothing astonishing about finding arms in a war zone. We can
01:16 imagine that it could be the security of the hospital, we can imagine that it
01:19 could be Hamas fighters who were injured and being treated in the hospital or
01:25 just a Hamas police station as we know there's a police station for Hamas in
01:29 the Shifa Hospital since at least 2014. So nothing mounts to what we were showed
01:36 and here maybe we can look at another video, a 3D video that was issued by the
01:42 Israelis a few weeks back to justify or it was actually the main argument to see
01:48 that this military complex that they claim is under the Shifa Hospital
01:52 justifies a big military operation in order to stop a Hamas activity in Gaza.
01:59 As we speak we don't have any proof of this facility being real actually.
02:06 Maybe in the upcoming hours, in the upcoming days, the Israelis will come out
02:10 with another, with proofs, but up to this point they didn't and even it's maybe a
02:16 little bit clumsy to have issued such proof as a few Kalashnikovs to justify
02:22 the military operation ongoing there.
02:24 Alright, huge questions then about what the Israelis did in al-Shifa Hospital.
02:28 More broadly though, tell us what's happening in the Israeli ground war in
02:33 the north because it is hard for us to get clear information but you've been
02:38 looking into the footage so what do you think?
02:40 Of course, so let us see the map another time and here we see the evolution of
02:43 Israeli operations. So as I told you the port is occupied by the Israeli military.
02:48 We see the street 10 in blue and we see the street Salah al-Din, street in red,
02:53 which is the street which is supposed to evacuate civilians from the north all
02:58 the way to the south and as we look at this map we understand that the
03:03 evolution of Israeli forces is still very limited to the area of
03:09 the beach actually and the Shati camp.
03:12 They didn't yet get into really dense neighborhoods in the heart of Gaza City
03:19 despite the fact that they occupied the assembly building, they occupied the
03:24 military police, they entered the Shifa Hospital and the Rentisi Hospital.
03:28 We see in this video what does it look like. This is an Israeli footage
03:33 that was published. Here is the evolution in the northern part of Gaza and what
03:38 was used to be a training camp of Hamas and we see the huge firepower of the
03:45 Israelis and here we see examples of tunnels that were used by Hamas fighters
03:49 in the first lines of defense of Gaza City and here we're going to watch
03:55 blowing up one of the tunnels. In another video we see the
04:00 evolution of Israeli forces here and on the shores of the Shati camp.
04:05 In the middle of northern Gaza towards the beach and here the
04:10 fighting was really hard and we see it in the streets, in the buildings and
04:15 this is where the Israeli forces lost some of the men in the process
04:22 of going all around Gaza City as we said the dense areas of Gaza City.
04:29 On the other hand we can look at some Hamas footage now and here are the
04:36 images from Hamas side. This is how Hamas is confronting the Israeli
04:40 forces with the RPG-7 Tandems fabricated locally by Hamas and
04:46 attacking Israeli tanks and what they consider as vulnerable areas of the tank
04:52 knowing that each shot doesn't mean that the tank is destroyed or as if the tank
04:56 is stopped. Some are but not all of course you only have one footage of a
05:04 tank which was quite damaged but you don't have proof that each shot is
05:09 getting a tank being destructed and in another footage that maybe we can see it
05:14 will show us how Hamas is using the buildings. So this tank is being
05:20 shot from above and this is why as you see on this Merkava 4 it is protected
05:25 the tower is protected and here what we saw this it's a native GM it's a guided
05:29 missile so it's important because we didn't see a lot of them yet so
05:34 we can imagine that Hamas is still waiting for Israeli forces to get into
05:38 the heart of Gaza City in order to use such kind of missiles are much more
05:43 efficient than the tandem that we saw and one particular thing here is the
05:46 footage of from Ashkelon and we see that this is in Israel and we see that
05:51 despite 40 days of fighting Hamas is still being able to shoot rockets on a
05:56 civilian areas in Israel. Knowing that that was one of the main
06:01 objective of the Israeli operation is to stop Hamas from shooting rockets which
06:05 is Hamas is still doing as we speak. All right really important thank you very
06:09 much indeed for showing us that footage from the IDF and from Hamas as well and
06:13 meanwhile take us to something that's happening near Jerusalem today this is
06:18 and we're getting reports that three gunmen attacked a checkpoint they
06:23 wounded six Israeli members of the security forces there just tell us a bit
06:28 about that and perhaps what that tells us about what's happening in the West
06:31 Bank about Palestinian militancy in the West Bank. Well actually the situation is
06:35 very tensed in the West Bank and in Jerusalem also when you can look at the
06:38 footage that we got from the equipment of the of the attackers and that's
06:44 that's another footage of a Hamas attack in the West Bank it was issued by Hamas
06:48 and we see how they trapped an Israeli patrol they burned the car actually here
06:53 and when the Israeli patrol came to check the car they activated improvised
06:57 explosive devices all around the patrol so this is one of the rare operations
07:02 that were that were claimed actually by Hamas in the West Bank knowing that the
07:08 activity and this is here what we were talking about the equipment of the
07:12 attackers of Jerusalem today and you see how many the guns the ammunition and the
07:19 determination to commit such an attack and to make a high number of casualties
07:24 so we can imagine that one of the most important fronts today we talk about
07:28 about the front in the north with Hezbollah the front with Syria and the
07:32 Golan but one of the most important fronts and critical fronts today for
07:35 Israel is in the West Bank knowing that settlers activity is higher getting
07:41 higher and higher and creating much more tension and resentment in the for the
07:46 Palestinian population in the West Bank where Hamas is getting more and more
07:51 popular as we speak