IDF offers incubators for Gaza newborns, aid to Al-Shifa Hospital

The IDF is coordinating the transfer of incubators for newborns from an Israeli hospital to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, the military stated early Tuesday morning.

The announcement comes as it conducts an ongoing effort to provide humanitarian assistance to the Gazan hospital. 

“The IDF remains committed to upholding its moral and professional responsibilities to distinguish between civilians and Hamas terrorists,” the military spokesperson said. “The IDF is willing to work with any reliable mediating party to ensure the transfer of the incubators.”

In a phone call released by the IDF, an officer from the Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA) to Gaza, speaking with the Director General of Al-Shifa Hospital, can be heard offering the incubators as well as helping evacuate children and patients from the facility.

Israel ready to provide assistance to Al-Shifa Hospital

“We are ready to provide you with any assistance you wish to evacuate children and patients. We are ready to provide you with any assistance. We’ll even provide you with an incubator,” the officer said.

Asked if there was anything else he needed, the director general  said that they needed respirators for some children who were in need of oxygen.

The Israeli officer vowed to do what he could to secure the needed equipment.

“Anything, despite all the difficulties; whatever I can do, I will try to help you,” the CLA officer said. “I will help you protect the injured and the patients.”

“Ok, and also the medical staff,” the director general said.

“Of course, of course,” the CLA officer replied.

In a video released by the IDF along with the recording of the phone call, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) spokesperson, Shani Sasson, standing in front of the incubators that are to be sent to Al-Shifa, stated that “extensive efforts are underway to ensure that these incubators… can reach babies in Gaza without delay. Our war is against Hamas, and not the people of Gaza.”

Previously, however, Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have said that Al–Shifa has refused Israeli assistance.

"We just offered Shifa hospital the fuel; they refused it," Netanyahu claimed on Sunday.

Earlier this month, a Gaza health official stated in a phone call intercepted by the IDF that Hamas takes fuel provided to Al-Shifa.

Another intercepted call recorded a health official saying that the director general of Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry, Yusef Abu Rish, had prevented a delivery of fuel from getting to the hospital.

Prior to the offer of incubators, the IDF spokesperson, R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari, said that the army would help evacuate babies from the hospital.

The evacuation offer came as the ministry had claimed that two babies had died in an incubator because the hospital ran out of fuel. 

A spokesman from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said on Tuesday there was no objection to having babies evacuated from Al Shifa Hospital but there was no mechanism for an evacuation to take place.

"We have no objection to have the babies moved to any hospital, in Egypt, the West Bank or even to the occupation hospitals. What we care most is about the wellbeing and the lives of those babies," Ashraf Al-Qidra said, speaking by telephone from the hospital.