However, the source added that the assumption within the Israeli defense establishment is that Hizbullah has incorporated into its future war plans the potential to raid Israeli cities via tunneling, learning lessons from the most recent Gaza conflict.
Foreign Journalists Covered Up For Hamas
It was an open secret among foreign reporters that Hamas used the Gaza Strip’s main hospital as its command center, reported Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s largest daily newspaper.
The paper, citing numerous foreign reporters, said journalists reporting from Gaza did not tell their audiences of Hamas’s use of the Al-Shifa hospital because they feared retaliation from Hamas. The newspaper further documented the climate of fear that Hamas instilled in Gaza-based reporters.
The very day the conflict started last month, this reporter became the first and, until now, was virtually the only foreign journalist to report that top Hamas leaders used the Al-Shifa hospital as its command center.
Now, a foreign reporter has told Yediot that “it is an open secret that Hamas uses Al-Shifa hospital as its command center,” but “reporters in Gaza would not report that out of fear that it would endanger them.”
Yediot quoted another journalist, Palestinian reporter Radjaa Abu Dagga, who said Hamas summoned him to answer for some of his reporting, accusing him of working for an Israeli newspaper.
Dagga said the interrogation by Hamas took place at the Al-Shifa hospital. He said Hamas took his passport and threatened him, forcing the removal of an article published in the French newspaper Libération.
Other reporters explained to Yediot that Hamas spokesmen only agreed to be interviewed in the courtyard of Al-Shifa hospital. This was done likely for safety reasons, with the patients serving as human shields. It also created the impression that only civilians were wounded in Israeli attacks, since civilians were streaming into the hospital for treatment.
Indeed, according to the foreign reporters, Hamas imposed a total news media blackout on any reporting of wounded or dead Hamas fighters, once again trying to convey to the world that only civilians were harmed by Israeli strikes.
A Spanish reporter told Yediot: “We saw the Hamas men. But had we dared point the cameras at them, they would have opened fire at us and killed us.”