As Israeli forces battle Hamas in Gaza, the world’s largest underground hospital, in the north of Israel, is rushing to ready itself for a possible second front opening up with Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon.
The Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa has finished preparations to move its operations – as well as patients, family members and staff – several meters underground into what is normally a parking lot.
The move is being made over fears of attacks on Israel from its northern border, the hospital’s director-general has told Newsweek.
“The issue is another front in the north,” Professor Miki Halberthal said on Tuesday, just after his team finished the setting up the Sammy Ofer Fortified Underground Hospital. “Most worrying is the opening of another confrontation in the north with Hezbollah.”
On Saturday, Palestinian militants fighting for Hamas launched a coordinated attack from air, sea, and land in southern Israel. Hamas fighters swept through towns and kibbutzim, as thousands of rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip to the west of Israel in an assault that took Israeli authorities by surprise.
MAHMOUD ZAYYAT/AFP via Getty Images
For days, Israel has launched waves of air strikes along the Gaza Strip, and has vowed to come out victorious in what it has called the “war” against Hamas.
The violence has come at a heavy cost to both sides. Latest figures put the death toll for Israelis at more than 1,000 killed, according to Israel’s embassy in the U.S. Palestinian health authorities in Gaza said on Tuesday that 830 Palestinians in the territory had been killed since Saturday.
Gazans should “distance themselves from designated areas,” the Israel Defense Forces said on Tuesday, adding separately that it has secured its border with Gaza after instituting a siege on the strip of land.
The Rambam Hospital has received around 50 patients from the hotspots of fighting in southern Israel since Saturday, Halberthal said on Tuesday. The hospital treated a roughly equal split of civilians and military personnel, he said, adding many had light injuries and have since been discharged. However, 12 people with moderate or severe injures remained at the hospital.
Rambam Health Care Campus
Hospitals in southern Israel received an “overwhelming” number of casualties over the weekend, with one facility taking in around 700 Israelis in just 12 hours, Halberthal said.
Medical facilities in Gaza have been inundated with patients, and “there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip,” one fleeing resident told Al Jazeera.
Representatives for Hamas said on Tuesday evening local time that they had launched rockets at the Israeli city of Ashkelon, eight miles north of the border with Gaza.
Yet after days of attention on Gaza and southern Israel, the focus is quickly turning to the north of Israel that had avoided much of Hamas’ initial attacks.
Hamas is unlikely to be able to launch significant rocket attacks from the south up to Haifa, Halberthal said. The main worry for the hospital is its proximity to Lebanon, and the possible consequences of an onslaught from Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Hezbollah said on Sunday it had fired on Israeli targets shortly after Hamas launched its attacks, acting “in solidarity” with the Palestinian fighters moving into Israel.
“We are constantly in coordination, cooperation and are conducting meetings with Palestinian groups in Lebanon,” a Hezbollah spokesperson told The New Arab on Saturday.
While Hamas has, in general terms, a number of more rudimentary, often domestically produced rockets, Hezbollah has access to a large cache of more sophisticated weapons that could pose a real danger from north of Israel’s border.
Supported by Tehran and Damascus, Hezbollah is “the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor,” U.S. think tank, the Center for International and Strategic Studies, has previously said. Armed with small, unguided surface-to-surface rockets, the “sheer number” of rockets at Hezbollah’s disposal “make them effective weapons of terror,” the think tank said in 2021.
Rambam Health Care Campus
Tuesday saw an exchange of fire on the Lebanon-Israel border after six people were killed in the area on Monday, including three Hezbollah members, an Israeli officer and two Palestinian militants, Reuters reported.
The IDF said late on Tuesday that an Israeli helicopter struck a Hezbollah observation post after a Hezbollah anti-tank missile was “fired from Lebanese territory at a military vehicle in the Avivim area.” It had previously said IDF tanks struck two observation posts, adding: “The IDF is prepared for all scenarios in all arenas.”
On Tuesday evening, the Israeli Air Force posted on X, formerly Twitter: “Following the initial report regarding launches in northern Israel, approximately 15 rockets were launched from Lebanese territory. The IAF Aerial Defense Array successfully intercepted four rocket launches. 10 launches fell in open areas.”
Although Tuesday was the deadliest day of border violence in the north since the 2006 war, wider involvement from Hezbollah is yet to gather steam.
But the memory of the 2006 war is indelibly marked in the memories of those staffing the Rambam Hospital. The war, where missiles were “falling around us,” Halberthal said, spurred the construction of the fortified underground hospital, which took three and a half years and US $140 million to carve out. It was completed in 2010.
The enormous Sammy Ofer Fortified Underground Hospital, which has almost double the capacity of the 1,100-bed above-ground hospital, is used as a parking lot when it’s not required.
The 60,000 square meter facility is split over three levels, and is a fully-functioning hospital with the infrastructure built into the walls or easily slotted in when needed.
Yet now it may indeed be needed, and the staff at Rambam have completed preparations, with a helping hand from a nearby Israeli military base, Halberthal said, which shortened the 72-hour process to just a day and a half.
It would take as little as eight hours to transfer all of the hospital’s patients underground, Halberthal predicted. In total, the fortified hospital could cater for approximately 2,000 patients, 3,000 family members and 2,500 staff, he said, and could be self-sufficient for up to three days in the event of a chemical or biological attack.
“It’s now wait and see,” Halberthal said.