Gaza hospital blast: Whatever happened, the fog of war tells us that it's not what we think right now

It isn’t often that a president visits a war zone.  President Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq on Thanksgiving 2003.  President Trump surprised troops at a remote airbase in Iraq the day after Christmas in 2018.  In February of this year, President Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv.  Tonight, Air Force One lifted off from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland carrying President Biden to Israel. 

Notice anything different?  Biden’s visit to Israel was talked about over the weekend in reports from both Israel and Washington.  Yesterday, it was confirmed by the White House that the visit would take place tomorrow, Wednesday.  

No secrecy.  Everybody in the world knew yesterday that Biden would be in Israel tomorrow. Including Hamas. 

Tonight, there was an explosion at the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City.  The explosion killed “hundreds,” according to the Gazan health ministry.  Hamas is claiming that the hospital was hit by an Israeli airstrike.  Israel is saying that the explosion was caused by an Islamic Jihad missile misfire.  The story is dominating the news on CNN, MSNBC, Sky News, and every other news outlet as I write this.  Already, the hospital blast has adversely affected Biden’s trip.  Biden’s stop in Amman Jordan has just been canceled.  Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, just announced that his meeting with Biden is canceled. 

I’m sure Air Force One, in the air over the Atlantic, is a hive of activity, with everyone trying to figure out what happened and what the American response will be.  When Biden lands in Israel tomorrow morning, the blast at the Gaza hospital is all anyone will be talking about, with charges and counter charges flying between Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Israel. 

What matters right now isn’t the reason for the blast, but the human suffering it caused.

I’m not saying it’s impossible that Israel could have had a missile or smart bomb go wrong and strike a civilian hospital, but it is highly unlikely with the Biden visit less than 24 hours away.  It is far more likely that Hamas or Islamic Jihad staged this incident at this time on purpose.  Both organizations have shown their willingness to kill civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian, in the past.  Hamas effectively killed more than 1,500 of its own fighters by sending them into Israel on October 7.  They knew the only militants who would return from that suicide attack were the ones who were assigned to take hostages and move them back into Gaza.  They also knew as well as you and I know our own names that Israel would immediately strike back with its own missiles and bombs on Gaza and that thousands of civilians would die, because Hamas hides its militants, its leaders, its weapons and ammunition stores – in fact, everything – among the civilian population in Gaza so Israel would have to strike civilian houses and apartment buildings in order to destroy Hamas targets.

These are the known facts of this conflict.  What is unknown, and perhaps for the foreseeable future unknowable, is what caused the explosion at the hospital in Gaza.  A video purporting to show the explosion is already online on YouTube.  There are photographs online that are claimed to have been taken inside and outside the hospital.  One photo, purportedly from a security camera, shows a fire burning just past walls leading to an open area between two buildings:

Another photo, from Arab News, shows a ground-level fire in the midst of some buildings with an ambulance and a man wearing scrubs in the foreground:

It cannot be confirmed at this time if any of the photos or the video show what they are said to show.  I have looked at the photos and watched the purported video of the explosion. I also watched a video put up by Al Jazeera, that shows several rockets leaving their launchers on the right of the screen, the apparent explosion of at least one rocket on its upward trajectory, and an explosion on the ground almost immediately below the rocket explosion in the air. The video then zooms in on the area of the explosion and what it shows is the most interesting thing about it: After the initial explosion, a fire continues to burn, almost like an oil rig fire, or a fire from a damaged liquid petroleum storage cylinder. The fire rages on and on until the video ends.

Visible on the right of the video when the fire is in close-up is a right angle triangle of steel beams. I looked up photos of the al-Ahli Hospital. One photo on an Irish Anglican diocesan website shows a huge solar array erected by the Irish diocese atop a giant right-angle set of steel beams on top of the al-Ahli hospital. Here is a photo of the solar array on top of the hospital:

Comparing this photo to the video, it appears to me the video shows the fire at the al-Ahli hospital with the solar array visible in profile on the right. The blaze is in an open area next to the hospital with a big evergreen tree in the foreground that seems to begin to catch fire as the video ends. The video is on a Twitter/X page, which I can embed only as the address below. If you click on it, you can see the video from Al Jazeera.

https://x.com/yousuf_tw/status/1714367757968384106?s=20

Hamas is claiming that as many as 4,000 civilians were sheltering inside the hospital. From the photos of the hospital I have seen, the building would not hold that many people:

I can tell you this much from what I know of the weaponry that is being talked about.  One:  A single misfired Islamic Jihad rocket would not be able to create the size of the blast shown on the YouTube video.  The rockets being fired by Hamas and Islamic Jihad have warheads that weigh either 20 or 40 pounds.  Pictures of Israeli homes hit by Hamas Qassam rockets show walls blasted out and parts of roofs missing.  That level of damage would be consistent with being hit by a 20 to 40 pound warhead.  But such a warhead would not be capable of bringing down a building the size of the al-Ahli Hospital.

Israeli is attacking Gaza using smart bombs and missiles fired by jet aircraft.  Unless there were to be a strike by multiple missiles or bombs that all hit at once on the same exact place on or near a building the size of the al-Ahli Hospital, it is unlikely that the explosion and fire shown in the videos would be the result of such a strike.  On the other hand, if an Israeli strike hit a store of gasoline, liquid petroleum, or Hamas ammunition next to the hospital, a fireball followed by a fire as shown in the video could result. 

But it is just as possible that Hamas or Islamic Jihad set off an explosion at or next to the hospital, blowing up the same sort of gasoline, natural gas, or munitions placed there to protect them from Israeli airstrikes.

At this point, we don’t know exactly what happened in Gaza today, and we may never know unless a team of forensics experts at some time in the future can examine the site of the explosion and collect the kind of evidence needed to pinpoint its cause, such as bomb fragments and chemical evidence of the explosive used.

In the meantime, it appears that there are many victims of the explosion and that most if not all of them are Palestinian civilians.  And it appears that whatever the cause of the explosion, it is going to have a serious effect on Biden’s visit to Israel.  Already, there are mass demonstrations against Israel and the U.S. in capitals around the Middle East.  Tomorrow, the U.S. Security Council is scheduled to meet to discuss a possible ceasefire so that humanitarian aid can be brought into Gaza. 

I don’t know who in the White House or in Israel came up with the idea of advertising the Biden visit in advance, but right now, it is turning out to have been a major mistake.