Israeli agents disguised as doctors, patients kill 3 at West Bank hospital

Israeli security forces disguised as doctors and patients raided a hospital in the occupied West Bank early Tuesday and killed three Palestinian militants, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the Israel Defense Forces and Palestinian militant groups.

Legal analysts said the attack, the aftermath of which was captured in multiple videos, may have violated a prohibition in international law.

The Israeli troops entered the Ibn Sina Hospital in the West Bank town of Jenin early Tuesday and shot three young men to death in the hospital’s wards, the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement. The ministry called the raid a “crime,” and one of “dozens” committed by Israel against medical facilities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The Israel Defense Forces said the operation targeted militants who were “hiding” in the hospital. In a statement, the IDF said Mohammed Jalamneh, a Hamas fighter, and brothers Mohamed and Basil Ghazawi were “neutralized.”

The IDF said Jalamneh “carried” a gun but did not indicate that the men had resisted in any way before they were killed. “Jalamneh planned to carry out a terror attack in the immediate future and used the hospital as a hiding place and therefore was neutralized,” the IDF said. It did not provide more detail.

Hamas confirmed that Jalamneh was a member of the group. Another militant group, Islamic Jihad, said Mohamed and Basil Ghazawi were members and that Basil had been receiving treatment at the hospital.

Hamas called the killings a “war crime” that “will not go unanswered.” Islamic Jihad, in its statement, said it would “not let this crime pass without an appropriate response.”

Video apparently taken from hospital security cameras showed what appeared to be the Israeli raiding party retreating from the premises.

A dozen or more people in a variety of disguises, including medical scrubs and civilian clothes, weave through hospital corridors brandishing assault weapons, video that circulated on social media shows. One armed man wears a face mask and carries a wheelchair. Another appears to search a person who is kneeling on the floor. At least three are dressed in women’s clothes.

The time stamp on the footage read 5:43 a.m.

Other footage, verified by Storyful and confirmed by The Washington Post, shows what appears to be a scene where an execution has taken place. A pillow on a hospital bed is pierced by a hole and surrounded by blood spatter. Two lounge chairs next to the bed are also stained with blood.

Ibn Sina spokesman Tawfiq al-Shobaki confirmed that Basil Ghazawi had been receiving treatment in the hospital since October. He said he was paralyzed.

There was no exchange of fire before the Israeli forces shot the men, Shobaki said. Israeli forces have made arrests in medical facilities, he said, but this was the first time he saw them kill.

Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the IDF chief of staff, told reservists Tuesday, “We do not want to turn hospitals into battlefields, with patients on the right and doctors and nurses on the left, and terrorists in the middle.” But Israel would not allow the medical system, he said, “to become a place that is a cover for terrorism.”

While Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza has drawn global attention, the country has also intensified raids and arrests across the West Bank.

The fighting erupted on Oct. 7, when Hamas militants streamed out of Gaza and killed 1,200 people in Israel. Israeli forces have since killed more than 26,700 people in Gaza.

At least 367 Palestinians, including 94 children, have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, according to the United Nations. The great majority were killed by Israeli forces.

As the occupying power in the West Bank, Israel is allowed to take “security measures,” according to Aurel Sari, a professor of public international law at the University of Exeter in Britain. But it’s also compelled not to use “lethal force as a first resort.”

Different considerations would apply if the individuals killed by Israel had played some role in the Oct. 7 attack and were militants, not civilians. In that case, Sari said, they could be “targeted by lethal force.”

But even then, “they would have enjoyed immunity from attack if they were wounded or sick and refrained from any acts of hostilities against Israeli forces,” he said. “Targeting those who are hors de combat” - outside the fighting, because of injury or other reasons - or “otherwise protected is a violation of the law of armed conflict.

“The law of armed conflict also prohibits killing or injury by resort to perfidy, for example in cases where the attacker feigns protected status,” he said.

“By disguising themselves as civilians and as medical personnel, the Israeli forces involved in the operation appear to have resorted to perfidy in violation of the applicable rules.”