Tareq S. Hajjaj
The Israeli army is besieging yet another hospital in north
Gaza, following the same playbook it has used throughout the war to invade and
destroy Gaza's hospitals.
Palestinians arrive at the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia, northern
Gaza, after an Israeli airstrike on their neighborhood, May 16, 2025.
(Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)
When the
doctors and patients inside the Indonesian Hospital in north Gaza heard the
sound of Israeli tanks approaching and the buzzing of quadcopter drones in the
sky, a sinking and all-too-familiar feeling set in. After 19 months of Israeli
attacks on hospitals across the Strip, their turn had come.
It began at
around 2:30 a.m. local time on Sunday, May 18, after a violent night of air
raids targeting northern Gaza and the areas around the hospital, forcing
residents to flee for their lives. Then the artillery shelling and drone fire
began.
“We saw [the
Israeli army] and witnessed heavy gunfire and tank shells exploding around us
and near us,” Bashar Ahmad, a patient at the hospital, told Mondoweiss. “No one
dared look outside the windows of the departments or leave the doors, because
anyone who was spotted was shot at. The quadcopters swarmed around the hospital
like flies, and we had no idea what they were up to.”
Under heavy
fire from the military, some patients, their families, and the displaced people
who were sheltering in the hospital were forced to leave. Familiar scenes of
desperate people dragging their sick relatives, still in hospital beds, across
the rubble-strewn streets of Gaza played out once again. Those whose health
conditions prevented them from moving remained in the hospital, only to be
surprised by the arrival of tanks and bulldozers.
The bulldozers
and tanks carried out extensive destruction on the hospital grounds, including
its walls and surrounding areas. Patients, doctors, and displaced families
inside the hospital were afraid of being killed or arrested while lying in
their hospital beds, according to eyewitness testimony gathered for Mondoweiss.
“They bombed
two electricity generators in the hospital, and left one still working,” said
Yousef Ezz al-Din, a nurse working at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza.
“No one can reach the remaining generator to fill it with diesel, which will
run out within hours. The army shoots at anyone who steps outside.”
“Everyone in
the hospital is a patient who was already suffering before the siege, due to
the lack of medicine and supplies,” Ezz al-Din continued.
Hours after the
bulldozers and tanks had arrived, Israeli infantry forces joined them and
surrounded the hospital, blocking off any exit. The director of the Indonesian
Hospital, Marwan Sultan, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli army had surrounded
the hospital and was shooting at anyone who moved. “Israeli aircraft targeted
the intensive care unit inside the hospital,” he added
In this
invasion, the Israeli army did not send any evacuation orders or advance
warning, hospital staff and patients told Mondoweiss. The arrival of the army
was so sudden that it left people little time to flee, resulting in yet another
case of hospital staff, patients, and families trapped inside a Gaza hospital,
awaiting their death.
The siege of
the Indonesian Hospital came a day after the Israeli army launched its expanded
and wide-ranging military campaign to permanently “conquer” the Strip. The
eventual objective of the assault, dubbed “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” is to
facilitate the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza via “voluntary migration,”
as repeatedly voiced by Israeli government officials — most recently, by
Netanyahu today in a televised address.
A page out
of the playbook
At this point
in Israel’s genocidal war, there is a familiar playbook for how Israeli forces
go about invading hospitals in Gaza. That playbook is now being used in the
Indonesian Hospital, the last functioning medical institution in northern Gaza
— albeit with some modifications —
following the Israeli army’s destruction of Kamal Adwan Hospital at the
end of last year.
This is what
happens when the Israeli army puts a hospital in Gaza under siege.
It usually
starts with evacuation orders for the surrounding areas, followed by heavy
bombardment and shelling. Then the hospital itself might receive an evacuation
order, or it might be targeted ahead of the arrival of ground forces. When
ground forces arrive, they place the hospital under siege.
At this point,
the Israeli army will have put out several unsubstantiated claims regarding a
Hamas “command-and-control” center in the hospital as cover for an impending
incursion into its facilities. The army would then likely invade, expelling the
hospital’s residents and patients, arresting members of its staff, and in some
cases conducting field executions of alleged “Hamas operatives” in the
hospitals. Previous reports of mass graves found on hospital grounds show that
many of the bodies were of hospital staff in scrubs and patients with medical
catheters still attached.
The Israeli
army did this at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in March 2024, Nasser Hospital
in Khan Younis in April 2024, and Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia in
December 2024. It will likely now do the same at the Indonesian Hospital in
northern Gaza.
This Israeli
playbook has been used so many times that the people trapped inside the
Indonesian Hospital tell Mondoweiss they know exactly what is coming.
‘Save us
before it’s too late’: screams falling on deaf ears
According to
eyewitnesses, eight doctors and nurses are currently inside the Indonesian
Hospital, along with over thirty patients and their family members. They say
they were surprised that the hospital was surrounded, as they had expected to
receive an evacuation warning first, like with Kamal Adwan Hospital, which had
been besieged for over 75 days before it was cleared.
Yet sudden
invasions of hospitals have not been unheard of throughout the war, as in the
case of the Israeli army’s surprise attack on al-Shifa during its second
invasion of the compound in March 2024. According to patients and hospital
staff, this is the model the Israeli army appears to be using for the
Indonesian Hospital during its current siege of the compound.
Speaking from
inside the hospital, Bashar Ahmad describes the assault on patients and the
wounded as “the most despicable human act.” He says those inside were among the
most vulnerable — immobile and bedridden, receiving treatment and unable to
flee.
“They bombed
everything around the hospital — homes, farmland, even houses they had already
destroyed, they bombed again,” Ahmad says. “They struck two electricity
generators to plunge us into total darkness. They terrorize us while we are
weak and sick, without food, water, or any of the basic necessities of life.”
This kind of
direct targeting and bombing of hospital grounds has become more prominent
during recent weeks, with the army bombing the facilities of two hospitals in
Khan Younis last week. An army drone targeted Nasser Hospital’s burn unit on
May 13, killing renowned Gaza journalist Hasan Eslayeh, among others. The
following day, the Israeli army dropped 9 bunker-buster bombs over several
areas within the European Hospital compound, killing over 28 people in an
alleged attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Muhammad Sinwar.
Ahmad explains
that everyone sheltering inside the Indonesian hospital is forced to constantly
lie on the ground, as any movement could be fatal. “No one can move, no one can
do anything. We try to leave, but the army shoots at us directly. They’re targeting
us with firebelts around the hospital. The situation is dire — we are under
siege,” he says.
This is also a
familiar strategy. During the Israeli army’s first siege of al-Shifa Hospital
in November 2023, patients and hospital staff were shot through windows by
snipers, while others trying to leave were also targeted. The bodies of over
100 martyrs were left to rot in the courtyard, as dogs began to eat at their
bodies.
Contact with
the Indonesian Hospital may soon be cut off as Israeli forces continue to
target the facility’s infrastructure. On Sunday, the military struck two of the
hospital’s three electricity generators, threatening to cut off the last
remaining power source for the medical facility.
“Our phones
could die at any moment — our batteries are running out,” Ahmad says. “The
screams of women and children make it even harder. They cry out constantly in
fear as gunfire and shells explode around us.”
Ahmad says that
the families trapped in the hospital are screaming at the top of their lungs,
asking to be evacuated, but the sound of the shells and bullets drowns out
their voices. “We are trying to contact international organizations to get us
out of the hospital, but we don’t know who to call or to whom to appeal,” he
explains. “All we want is to get out and save the lives of those still
breathing.”
As of the time
of writing, the Israeli army has not stormed the hospital, despite its tight
siege over the compound and shooting at anyone who tries to leave.
‘We are
families, nurses, and doctors’
As the siege
began without warning, it left hospital residents without adequate food or
water for days, further exacerbating the already prevalent famine conditions in
Gaza. Youssef Ezz al-Din describes the situation as unbearable. “A few patients
and nurses are trapped inside the Indonesian Hospital with no supplies,” the
Indonesian Hospital nurse says. “The hospital was completely unprepared to cope
with the siege.”
“We are calling
on you to take action to save us before it’s too late,” he states. “Get us out
of the hospital. We are civilian families, nurses, and doctors, and we have
nothing to do with any of this.”
Khairallah
Hamto, a north Gaza resident accompanying his sick brother at the hospital,
says that “everyone is terrified” from the sounds of tanks.
“We are living
amid difficult humanitarian conditions,” he says. “We cannot endure these
conditions for long. We have nothing.”
Muhammad
al-Shareef gathered testimony from the Indonesian Hospital for this report.
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