JAKARTA: The Indonesia Hospital in Gaza has been turned into a military base by Israeli forces, the NGO that funded the facility said on Thursday.
The hospital in North Gaza opened in late 2015, financed by donations from the Indonesian people.
The four-story building near the Jabalia refugee camp was one of the Israeli military’s first targets in its deadly campaign that has killed at least 20,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since early October. More than 52,000 have been injured.
Nearly 2 million residents have been displaced within Gaza, with Israel also blocking entry of food and fuel, and cutting access to clean water.
Israel has said that its daily bombardment and siege of the densely populated territory is in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack by the Gaza-based militant group Hamas, but its forces have since destroyed more than half of the coastal enclave’s housing, and wiped out its civilian infrastructure and medical facilities.
The Indonesian Hospital was one of the last to remain operational, but Israeli attacks in late November forced staff and thousands of people seeking shelter in its premises to move to Gaza’s south.
Dr. Sarbini Murad, chairman of the Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, or MER-C, the Indonesian organization that funded the facility, said that it was “turned into barracks or a military base for the IDF (Israel Defense Forces).”
He told Arab News that the building is damaged but still standing, although most of its medical equipment has been destroyed by the Israeli military.
“We call on the IDF to leave the Indonesia Hospital to restore its function as a hospital and health center for residents in the north,” Murad said.
“Turning a hospital into a battlefield is in violation of the Geneva Convention.”
A day earlier, MER-C held a press conference in which Murad said that the hospital’s location was strategic, giving the IDF access to the surrounding areas.
Murad said that he also believed Israeli forces knew they were safe from Hamas attacks inside the hospital, which was funded by Indonesians who have historically stood with Palestine and backed its independence.
In early November, the Israeli military said that Hamas was using the Indonesia Hospital “to hide an underground command and control center.”
The claim was immediately denounced by MER-C as an attempt to “craft a public lie,” while the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the hospital “is a facility that Indonesians built entirely for a humanitarian purpose and to serve the medical needs of Palestinian people in Gaza.”
The MER-C chairman warned at the time that the Israeli military’s accusations may be “a precondition to attack the Indonesia Hospital in Gaza.”
