The visual evidence is what makes me think Palestinian militants (accidentally) caused the explosion.
First, live footage from Al Jazeera at the time showed rockets firing from a location in Gaza toward Israel. One rocket appeared to malfunction in mid-air and within a few seconds, an explosion happened on the ground approximately where the hospital is. The lean-too shape of the hospital roof can even be seen in the light from the explosion.
Second, daytime footage after the explosion showed that the hospital was still standing, with burned out cars in the parking lot. Several palm trees nearby were standing and unscathed (it was hard to tell if there were even scorch marks). The parking lot had a small crater maybe a meter in diameter with very little penetration into the ground. Israel's weapons have much stronger explosives, which would likely have completely destroyed the parking lot and wreaked havoc on adjacent buildings.
IMO, those two pieces of evidence strongly indicate to me that the Palestinians fired this rocket and it accidentally caused an explosion in the hospital parking lot.
One confusing aspect of the story to me is the death toll given in a matter of minutes after the explosion. It seems extremely improbable to me that anyone could confidently say 500 people died so quickly unless they were spreading propaganda.
EDIT: To be clear, I think the leaked call was authentic, but I don't think it's persuasive evidence because of its provenance. I fully think PIJ did this in support of Hamas, and then immediately blamed Israel to an enchanted Western press who can't see past an oppressor-oppressed narrative structure. But all of this is my opinion and not verifiable fact.
I thought this was a decent video. One of the strongest counterarguments I’ve seen to the failed rocket being the cause of the fireball (rather than merely a coincidence), is the timing. 7 seconds between the rocket breaking up (still unclear if due to failure or interception, someone please correct me if I’m wrong) and impact with the hospital. 7 seconds would certainly not be enough to fall to earth from what appears to be roughly 1km altitude, presuming that the motor is destroyed and that it still had significant upward momentum. So, either estimates I’ve seen of its altitude and vertical velocity are way off, or the rocket would have had to continue burning its motor pointing downward after the failure/interception, OR the explosion of the failure/interception would have had to impart enough momentum to launch the warhead and/or solid rocket fuel straight at the hospital. Not sure which of those 3 scenarios is most likely, I’d guess the last one.
The claim about airburst weapons seems like a massive reach. The tops of the palm trees are unscathed, the nearby buildings have more lower than upper windows blown-out. But if they didn’t make this claim they’d have ruled out all Israeli weapons so they just shoved it in there, despite being vanishingly unlikely. I’m pretty sure this is a self-serving tactic to obfuscate how obviously wrong they were initially and retain the faith of their viewers by making the situation look far more complex to unpick than it really is.
I’ve yet to hear a good explanation for how a fragment of a PIJ rocket could cause vastly, like an order of magnitude+, more damage than any that has ever landed in Israel.
But what I have seen is: Israel bomb UNRWA schools; issue evacuation orders for a bunch of hospitals, including this one in question; provide a number of inconsistent explanations and equivocations in the hours and days since; bomb the southern half of Gaza after demanding everyone evacuate the north. So I’m going with the most obvious explanation that Israel bombed this hospital, and it’s allies in the West plus a bunch of stooges like “the OSINT community” are muddying the waters and desperately trying to do damage control.
This is a photo of "ground zero" hosted by NBC News.[0] I'm not sure what "an order of magnitude+" more destruction is referring to. Perhaps you can enlighten us. From what I can tell, there is pretty minimal destruction seen here, and most of it can be explained by a small initial explosion with fire spreading vehicle to vehicle.
It’s clear that 500 people didn’t die from this. Which feels ugly to say, denying death figures in a bombing campaign which is clearly horrific and has killed thousands so far, but I just can’t imagine it. It’s kind of astounding that just by anchoring with the idea that this explosion killed 500 people, and the large eruption of fire (not indicative of an Israeli bomb, whether air burst or not), many many people have bought into this being a massive blast. It was not. Absolutely something achievable by a moderately sized rocket, possibly augmented by either rocket fuel or a diesel/oxygen tank on the ground.
Agreed. Very hard to agree with people subscribing to this timeline:
1. IDF warns hospital director to evacuate hospital.
2. Israel bombs hosptial in question causing major damage and injuring four doctors.
3. IDF calls hospital director asking why hospital still hasn’t been evacuated and demands imminent evacuation. Director says it’s impossible due to patient needing intensive care.
4. Hospital gets bombed. 400+ people die. Hamas-affiliated group did it.
First, live footage from Al Jazeera at the time showed rockets firing from a location in Gaza toward Israel. One rocket appeared to malfunction in mid-air and within a few seconds, an explosion happened on the ground approximately where the hospital is. The lean-too shape of the hospital roof can even be seen in the light from the explosion.
Second, daytime footage after the explosion showed that the hospital was still standing, with burned out cars in the parking lot. Several palm trees nearby were standing and unscathed (it was hard to tell if there were even scorch marks). The parking lot had a small crater maybe a meter in diameter with very little penetration into the ground. Israel's weapons have much stronger explosives, which would likely have completely destroyed the parking lot and wreaked havoc on adjacent buildings.
IMO, those two pieces of evidence strongly indicate to me that the Palestinians fired this rocket and it accidentally caused an explosion in the hospital parking lot.
One confusing aspect of the story to me is the death toll given in a matter of minutes after the explosion. It seems extremely improbable to me that anyone could confidently say 500 people died so quickly unless they were spreading propaganda.