Israeli Claims of Hamas Fighters in Gaza Hospitals May Have Been ‘Grossly Exaggerated,’ Says Senior ICC Prosecutor

The Hague (Quds News Network)- Claims about the presence of Hamas fighters in hospitals in Gaza under siege by Israel’s military have been “grossly exaggerated”, a top prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has said.

Andrew Cayley, who is leading the ICC’s Palestine investigation, questioned the reliability of claims about Hamas’s military activity in Gaza’s hospitals which have been made to justify Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities in the war-torn enclave, according to a report by the Guardian.

Cayley – who reports directly to the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan – is overseeing the inquiry which was launched in 2021 but accelerated after Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

Last month, Khan issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, as part of the inquiry.

Cayley’s team is continuing to examine a range of alleged crimes across the occupied Palestinian territories.

ICC prosecutors are understood to have reviewed incidents in which hospitals have been damaged or destroyed in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

According to the latest figures published by the World Health Organization (WHO), of the 35 hospitals in Gaza it has evaluated only 17 are described as “partially functioning”. Five are “fully damaged” and 13 are categorised as “non-functional”.

The Israeli military has repeatedly justified operations against medical facilities in Gaza with claims that they were being used by Hamas.

Cayley said the ICC faced “great difficulty assessing” the level of Hamas fighters presence in hospitals “because clearly there are lies being spoken, but that is really something we do need to get to the bottom of as a prosecution office”.

He added: “I think that has been grossly exaggerated, but we need to be able to demonstrate very clearly what the level of military presence was, if at all, in these hospitals because I think we’ve been misled about that in the press.”

Cayley indicated that Israeli operations against Gaza’s healthcare facilities would be examined.

“Looking at damage to health facilities, destruction of health facilities, we will be coming on to that probably later next year. We’re having to do this in stages simply because of the resources that we have,” he added, according to the report by the Guardian.

Cayley made the remarks at an event in The Hague about attacks on healthcare facilities in Sudan, Ukraine and Palestine held on the sidelines of the annual conference of the ICC’s member states.

He said Gaza’s health system is now barely functioning. “Airstrikes, sieges, raids on hospitals. Add to that lack of fuel, electricity, food, medicine. That’s why the system has collapsed.”

Hospitals, as well as medical infrastructure and personnel, have specific protections under international humanitarian law. Attacks against them are prohibited, but there are certain circumstances in which medical facilities can lose their protected status if they are used for combat activity.

Speaking last week, Cayley said his team had met and interviewed medical personnel who had returned from working in the territory.

Cayley said that the ICC has access to “exceptionally good satellite imagery” that showed “on a daily basis how these [hospitals] are destroyed”, but said investigators are seeking accurate imagery “showing either the truth or the falsehood of the usage of these facilities as military combat facilities”.