A spokesman for the political wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, admitted during an IDF interrogation that the terror group uses “all hospitals in the Gaza strip” for its operations and that it tried to hide the fact that one of its rockets struck Al-Ahli Arab Hospital at the beginning of the war.
In footage released by the IDF on Monday, Tarek Abu Shaluf states that the explosion at Al-Ahli hospital on 17 October was caused by “a local rocket”, but that “we said it was Israeli”.
“To erase this story, the movement [Islamic Jihad] made some moves, it made up a story that the rocket belonged to the occupation [Israel] and that the target was the [hospital] building,” Abu Shaluf says on camera.
“They relied on some of the stories from the international stories, from the international press.”
A statement released by the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, immediately after the blast claimed the explosion was caused by an Israeli rocket that fell short and hit the hospital, killing more than 500 Palestinians.
Israel stated the misfired rocket came from Palestinian Islamic Jihad and released drone footage and communications intercepts to supporting this. US officials investigating the explosion said the information indicated Israel was "not responsible" for the blast.
However, by the time this information had been released and analysed, international media outlets had reported Israel was behind the deadly explosion.
This false version of events swiftly spread on social media, with correspondents at major news outlets including the BBC suggesting Israel was responsible.
Abu Shaluf, who was captured along with 500 other terror operatives from Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital last month, also affirmed that the terror groups publicise strikingly different versions of events to internal media organisations and international organisations: “The international media differs from the Arab ones, they focus on humanitarian issues. We don’t speak to them in the language of violence, destruction and revenge.”
When asked by the interrogator which hospitals Islamic Jihad and Hamas operate out of, Abu Shaluf said “all of the hospitals” in Gaza “because there is internet there 24 hours, there is electricity 24 hours”.
He added that the groups occupy one or two rooms in each ward without needing to shut down an entire department.
The Al-Ahli Hospital explosion sent shockwaves around the world at the start of the war, with the misreporting strongly influencing public opinion at the time.
Immediately after the explosion, BBC correspondent Jon Donnison, who was reporting live from Israel, told viewers: “It’s hard to see what else this could be really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes.”
Hamas quickly claimed that "the massacre at the Baptist Hospital is a crime of genocide" and blamed Israel. It also called on Arab and Islamic countries to "intervene immediately" and urged Arabs in Judea and Samaria to attack Israeli forces to "avenge the massacre".
Jonathan Munro, the deputy chief executive of BBC News, later said Donnison "was wrong to speculate about the cause of the explosion of the hospital” but insisted: "At no stage did he actually say it was caused by the Israelis.”
