Analysis

IDF raid prompts tighter security at PA hospitals

Special police forces deployed in medical centers, given order to fire at Israeli army units during confrontations

By Avi Issacharoff
  • Avi Issacharoff, The Times of Israel's Middle East analyst, fills the same role for Walla, the leading portal in Israel. He is also a guest commentator on many different radio shows and current affairs programs on television. Until 2012, he was a reporter and commentator on Arab affairs for the Haaretz newspaper. He also lectures on modern Palestinian history at Tel Aviv University, and is currently writing a script for an action-drama series for the Israeli satellite Television "YES." Born in Jerusalem, he graduated cum laude from Ben Gurion University with a B.A. in Middle Eastern studies and then earned his M.A. from Tel Aviv University on the same subject, also cum laude. A fluent Arabic speaker, Avi was the Middle East Affairs correspondent for Israeli Public Radio covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Iraq and the Arab countries between the years 2003-2006. Avi directed and edited short documentary films on Israeli television programs dealing with the Middle East. In 2002 he won the "best reporter" award for the "Israel Radio” for his coverage of the second intifada. In 2004, together with Amos Harel, he wrote "The Seventh War - How we won and why we lost the war with the Palestinians." A year later the book won an award from the Institute for Strategic Studies for containing the best research on security affairs in Israel. In 2008, Issacharoff and Harel published their second book, entitled "34 Days - The Story of the Second Lebanon War," which won the same prize.
 17 November 2015, 6:20 pm
Security camera footage purporting to show undercover Israeli troops entering a Hebron hospital on November 12, 2015. (screen capture: YouTube)

The Palestinian Authority has increased security in hospitals in West Bank cities following a recent raid by an IDF undercover unit at a hospital in Hebron, Palestinian sources said on Tuesday.

The move came days after PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said that Palestinian security forces would increase protection at medical facilities due to the IDF operation that led to the arrest of a wanted terrorist.

In some West Bank cities, special units of the Palestinian police have been deployed at medical centers. The units have had extensive training in the securing and protection of government institutes.

According to the governors of some PA provinces, the police in the hospitals have been given explicit instructions to open fire if they encounter undercover IDF units.

Following the IDF undercover unit operation in Hebron, Palestinian social media users sharply criticized what they called PA incompetence.

Abdullah Azzam Shalaldeh, 28, was shot dead when Israeli soldiers raided the Al Ahli Hospital in Hebron early on November 12 in order to arrest his cousin, Azzam Izzat Shalaldeh. The Shin Bet security service said in a statement that Shalaldeh had been shot when he attacked soldiers as they tried to carry out the arrest.

The Shin Bet said its agents entered the hospital along with IDF and Border Police troops to arrest the 20-year-old Shalaldeh, after receiving intelligence that he was there recovering from a gunshot wound received while carrying out a stabbing attack on a West Bank road two weeks earlier.

A video posted to YouTube purports to show security footage of undercover Israeli troops walking through the hospital while pushing a person in a wheelchair.

Shalaldeh was accused of stabbing an Israeli man who got out of his car after being stoned outside the West Bank settlement of Metzad, south of Jerusalem.

Shalaldeh was shot by the stabbing victim, but managed to escape the scene, making his way to the the Hebron hospital.

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