Last Updated on November 21, 2023
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak admitted during an interview with CNN that Israeli contractors built the system under Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital that Israel now claims is being used for military bunkers, tunnels, command posts, and even hostage storage by Hamas, giving Israel’s military pretext to strike targets usually protected under the rules of war.
Ehud Barak, who’s served as Israel’s Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, among other governmental posts, told CNN that the Israelis are actually responsible for building the purported system of tunnels and bunkers beneath the Al-Shifa hospital and claims that the system serves as a “junction” for a wider underground system controlled by Hamas and used for war-fighting purposes.
“Can I just start by asking you to, what is your view of whether your government, your military, has done a good enough job of proving their claim that there was a major command center and bunker under Al-Shifa [Hospital],” the CNN interviewer asked Barak, who appeared in the segment by video stream.
“It’s already known for many years that the bunkers that originally were built by Israeli contractors under Al-Shifa were used as a command post of the Hamas and as kind of a junction of similar tunnels, part of this system,” Barak said. “I don’t know to say to what extent. It is major. It’s probably not the only kind of command post. There are others under other hospitals or in other sensitive places but it for sure has been used by Hamas, even during this conflict.”
“When you say it was built by Israeli engineers, did you misspeak?” the reporter asked Barak.
“No!” he replied.
“You know, decades ago we were running the place so we helped them,” Barak went on. “It was decades, many decades ago…four decades ago, that we helped them to build these bunkers in order to enable more, uh, more space for the operation of the hospital within the very limited size of this compound.”
“Ok. Alright. Well, that – that’s sort of throwing me a little bit,” said the CNN reporter. “So these were there for a long, long time but you’re claiming or they’re claiming that they’re used as a major command center. Anyway, the fact of the matter is that as yet, they have not shown conclusive proof of that.”
Watch the interview below:
Former Israeli PM: “Israel built the bunkers under al-Shifa hospital.” pic.twitter.com/e4G2GLByL4
— Stew Peters (@realstewpeters) November 21, 2023
As the CNN reporter mentioned in the interview with Ehud Barak, while the Israeli government and military have claimed for weeks that an elaborate system of tunnels and bunkers exists beneath Gaza, and that it connects to massive underground command posts and weapons depots beneath hospitals, nothing confirming this claim has actually been revealed and Israel has drawn increased scrutiny as it’s continued pounding civilian areas, like the Al-Shifa hospital, with military attacks.
