GAZA CITY — Just hours before President Donald Trump urged Israel on Friday to stop bombing the Gaza Strip, I gained access to the besieged city of Gaza, where the last main vestiges of the Hamas terrorist organization are holding out. Israel’s political echelon ordered the Israel Defense Forces to stop operations while preparations started to secure — as part of Trump’s 20-point peace plan — the swift release of 48 Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Israel’s government believes only 20 of those hostages remain alive.
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As part of a journalist’s embed with the IDF in the Gaza City neighborhood of Tel al‑Hawa, which Hamas renamed Tel al-Islam in 2007, I gathered exclusive information on an alleged new Hamas war crime: that Hamas had constructed a vast underground tunnel system below the Jordanian Field Hospital compound in order to produce rockets. A senior IDF official said, “Hamas company commanders and fighters were with the Jordanians” in the Field Hospital. The IDF presentation unfolded in a war-ravaged apartment building formally controlled by Hamas that is situated across from the Field Hospital.
The IDF showed via a live drone camera monitor the entrance to the 1.5-kilometer-long and 18-25-meter-deep Hamas tunnel. A short IDF film revealed an elaborate subterranean network of rooms, including workshops to produce missiles and sleeping and bathing quarters. Atop the sprawling medical facility, the Jordanian flag can be seen. As many as 80 Hamas fighters, including commanders, were based in the Field Hospital, according to the IDF official. When I asked the IDF official if the Jordanians knew Hamas was in the facility, he affirmed that the Hashemite Kingdom was aware.
When pressed why the Jordanians did not evict Hamas, the IDF official told me to ask the Jordanians. Jordan’s Embassy in Washington, D.C., and its Foreign Ministry did not respond to my press queries. Jordan has now relocated its Field Hospital to Khan Younis, southern Gaza. The IDF says that the tunnel under the Field Hospital will be destroyed.
The IDF capture of the Jordanian hospital did not suffer any damage, said the IDF official. A second IDF official said Hamas makes “no separation regarding the use of civilians and sick people” as part of its military objectives. Still, with the IDF’s progressive capture of more urban territory within Gaza City, Hamas has altered its conduct. The Hamas terrorists are solidified into “very small groups” and employ a lot of IEDs in buildings and streets along with snipers and small RPGs, the IDF official said. He added that “one of the key areas that Hamas is using snipers is in high-rise buildings.”
“Hamas is still fighting as a system and looking for our weak points. They are observing us,” the IDF official said. He said replacements for killed Hamas commanders are “a little less professional, pretty brave, but still fighting.” He noted that an IDF commander was killed two weeks ago via an anti-tank rocket in this Gaza City area.
The entry into Gaza City for the journalists took place in an armored IDF vehicle that travelled along a road of destroyed buildings and amid sandstorm-like conditions due to the heavy earth-moving equipment and tanks. The tiny gas-rich Islamist state of Qatar pumped at least $2 billion into Hamas’ coffers over the decade prior to Hamas’ invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023. The vast Qatari funding largely enabled Hamas to build its underground network —the so-called Gaza Metro— of more than 500 kilometers of tunnels.
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Hamas’ mass murder on 10/7 of roughly 1,200 people, including American citizens, was the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. The Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip claims that more than 66,000 people have died in the war. However, the exact number cannot be independently verified. Hamas does not distinguish between civilians and terrorists. According to Israel, the IDF has killed over 22,000 Hamas terrorists.
Basem Naim, a spokesman for Hamas, did not respond to my press query via WhatsApp about the IDF allegation that Hamas used the Jordanian Field Hospital to produce missiles.
Benjamin Weinthal is a freelance journalist who covers Middle East affairs for Fox News Digital and Iran International.