Hospital attack a reminder that Netanyahu won’t let international pressure lead to a ceasefire this time

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Past wars between Israel and Hamas had a deadly rhythm. The two sides would hit each other as hard as they could for a short period of time, with civilians bearing the brunt. Then something exceptionally awful would happen and the resulting international outcry would bring about a ceasefire.

Monday’s attack on Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis was just the latest reminder that this war between Israel and Hamas is not like the three previous ones in 2008, 2012 and 2014. International pressure will not force Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop this time. This war – now almost 23 months old – will continue.

The details of what happened in Khan Younis on Monday are, as usual, disputed. At 10 a.m. local time, an Israeli tank shell struck the roof of the Nasser Hospital, which in addition to being one of the last functioning medical facilities in Gaza was also a gathering point for Gaza’s besieged community of journalists. The rooftop of the four-floor hospital was one of the best places to access the internet, while also providing a relatively safe place from which to monitor what was happening below.

The first tank shell killed journalist Husam al-Masri, according to his employer, the Reuters news agency, although on Tuesday the Israeli military said an initial inquiry had found that troops from its Golani Brigade had been targeting “a camera that was positioned by Hamas in the area of the Nasser Hospital that was being used to observe the activity of IDF troops.”

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As medical workers and other journalists gathered at the scene, a second tank shell struck the same spot 10 minutes later.

The second attack was captured live on Jordan’s al-Ghad TV. A grim-faced photographer stepped gingerly around the scene as medical workers in orange vests prepared a stretcher to carry Mr. al-Masri’s body down a staircase on the outside of the building. Then the group disappeared in a thunderous explosion. Five journalists and at least five medical workers were reported to be among the 20 people killed in total, in what’s known in military circles as a double-tap strike.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based non-profit, says 189 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the start of this war. Israel has barred international journalists from entering Gaza since it began.

Hospitals have also been repeatedly targeted. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says 1,590 health workers have been killed, and that only 18 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals still qualify as “partially functional.”

While Mr. Netanyahu said Monday that the incident was a “tragic mishap,” by Tuesday, the Israeli military was instead suggesting that the hospital was a legitimate target owing to “the documented military use of hospitals by the terrorist organizations throughout the war.”

In a social-media post, the Israeli military said six of those killed at Nasser Hospital were Hamas members, including one fighter who had been involved in Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel. The Israeli military’s version of events did not address why the hospital had been struck a second time, as medical workers and journalists converged.

Israel and Hamas have fought three previous wars in the Gaza Strip in the two decades since Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from the narrow coastal territory and Hamas seized power in the chaotic aftermath. Each time, Western leaders initially gave full-throated support to Israel, then made increasingly loud calls for a ceasefire as the Palestinian death toll rose.

In 2012, international outrage over the killing of 10 members of one Palestinian family (Israel said one of the members was a Hamas “terror operative”), as well as two neighbours, helped bring an end to a week-long war that killed 174 Palestinians and six Israelis. Two years later, the deaths of four boys – aged 9 to 11 – who were shelled by an Israeli gunboat while they played soccer on the beach of Gaza City, in full view of international journalists, played a similar role, though it took several more weeks of violence to bring about a ceasefire and an eventual end to a war that killed 2,310 Palestinians and 73 Israelis.

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The pattern won’t be repeated this time. While world leaders issued condemnations – Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said, “Canada is horrified by the Israeli military’s bombing of the Nasser Hospital,” and even U.S. President Donald Trump said he was “not happy” when he heard about the incident – Mr. Netanyahu has made it clear that, this time, international opinion will not restrain Israel from pursuing what he calls “total victory.”

Instead of winding down its offensive, the Israeli military has recently begun calling up tens of thousands more reservists ahead of a planned assault on Gaza City. Mr. Netanyahu has said the war will continue until Hamas is totally destroyed.

Israel and its allies point to the Oct. 7 attack – which saw more than 1,200 people killed and 251 others taken back to Gaza as hostages – as justification for anything Israel has done in response. Gaza’s Ministry of Health says more than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed during the subsequent fighting.

Mr. Netanyahu has remained defiant even as UN agencies confirmed for the first time last week that famine was spreading in Gaza as a result of the nearly two-year-long siege that Israel has imposed.

He has ignored the pleas of even the families of the Israeli hostages, who – backed by tens of thousands of their supporters – staged the latest in a series of protests on Tuesday. The protesters blocked three of Israel’s major highways to back their demand that Mr. Netanyahu accept a ceasefire deal – a release of some hostages in exchange for a pause in the fighting to allow for humanitarian aid to enter – that Hamas says it has already agreed to. Israel believes that only around 20 of the remaining 50 hostages are still alive.

Mr. Netanyahu won’t be swayed by the hostage families, or the outcry over the Nasser Hospital attack either. The war will continue until he declares victory. No matter the cost.