Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is an interesting guy. He is a former IDF chief of staff who, as PM, was prepared to hand Yasser Arafat 97 percent of the West Bank in 2000 only to get the Second Intifada and for his Labor Party to never to hold power again. On Monday’s PBS Amanpour and Company, he fought with the eponymous host on the supposed lack of evidence the IDF has provided to justify fighting at the Al-Shifa Hospital complex.
In addition to the tunnels revealed recently by the IDF, Barak claimed that the reason Israel is certain there are bunkers under the facility is because it originally built some of them and they are now being misused by Hamas. This bit of history shook Amanpour, “Well, when you say it was built by Israeli engineers, did you misspeak?”
Barak was adamant that he didn’t, “No, no. You know, decades ago, we were running the place. So, we held them. It's a decade, many decades ago, probably five -- four decades ago, that we helped them to build these bunkers in order to enable more space for the operation of the hospital within the very limited size of this compound.”
Perhaps with that in mind, Amanpour then suggested that Israel has not proved anything yet, “Well, that's, that sort of thrown me a little bit. So, these were there for a long, long time, but you're claiming, or they're claiming, that they're used as a major command center. Anyway, the fact of the matter is, that as yet they have not shown conclusive proof of that. So, may I ask you what you –”
The version of Barak that used to be the uniformed head of the IDF then interrupted to point out a very obvious point, “Wait a minute. It's not easy. We take care not to hurt the operation of the hospital. So, we warned for many days that we are going to come there. Then we came very close, very cautiously in order to avoid a loss of life among the doctors, the patients or the, or the nurses there.”
Due to those concerns, “Hamas had all the time in the world to try to clean it, to try to erase it, to try to make it less kind of apparent when you come into that it was in use. But we are confident -- I cannot go into all the intelligence we've got. We are confident that, for years, it is already used as a kind of major or non-major, but as a command post for Hamas activities in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.”
There’s a lesson for the media in here that is not exclusively how people on the run tend to scrub evidence of their previous presence. It is that here is a man of the left, who was genuinely (if maybe somewhat naively) committed to peace with the Palestinians, who really does not like the current prime minister, saying the same things.
Here is a transcript for the November 20 show:
PBS Amanpour and Company
11/20/2023
11:04 PM ET
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Well, when you say it was built by Israeli engineers, did you misspeak?
EHUD BARAK: No, no. You know, decades ago, we were running the place. So, we held them. It's a decade, many decades ago, probably five -- four decades ago, that we helped them to build these bunkers in order to enable more space for the operation of the hospital within the very limited size of this compound.
AMANPOUR: Okay. All right. Well, that's, that sort of thrown me a little bit. So, these were there for a long, long time, but you're claiming, or they're claiming, that they're used as a major command center. Anyway, the fact of the matter is, that as yet they have not shown conclusive proof of that. So, may I ask you what you –
BARAK: OK. Christiane.
AMANPOUR: Yeah.BARAK: Christiane.
AMANPOUR: Yes.
BARAK: Wait a minute. It's not easy. We take care not to hurt the operation of the hospital. So, we warned for many days that we are going to come there. Then we came very close, very cautiously in order to avoid a loss of life among the doctors, the patients or the, or the nurses there.
So, as a result of it, the Hamas had all the time in the world to try to clean it, to try to erase it, to try to make it less kind of apparent when you come into that it was in use. But we are confident -- I cannot go into all the intelligence we've got. We are confident that, for years, it is already used as a kind of major or non-major, but as a command post for Hamas activities in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
