Is there any proof that under the hospitals that Israel bombarded there were military tunnels or some military?
Executive summary
The available reporting shows a contested and uneven evidentiary record: Israeli authorities released videos and claimed tunnels and weapon caches beneath several Gaza hospitals, and later reporting accepted parts of those claims (weapons storage, presence of tunnels) while questioning or disproving the stronger allegation that hospitals sat atop large-scale Hamas command-and-control centers; independent and media analyses frequently found the initial Israeli presentations incomplete or unpersuasive [1] [2] [3]. At the same time, investigations have shown some purported “tunnel entrances” were hospital infrastructure or nearby sites, and analysts have warned that footage can be inconclusive or manipulated, leaving a mixed — not definitive — public record [4] [5] [6].
1. What Israel presented: videos, tours and specific claims
The Israeli military publicly released footage, imagery and guided press visits asserting it had uncovered tunnels, blast doors, weapons and even leadership meetings under or adjacent to hospitals — claims repeated in official briefings and in Israeli-released video tours of places like Rantisi and the European Hospital [1] [7] [8]. The IDF described spiral staircases, blast doors and underground rooms and said forensic work and intelligence tied some of those spaces to Hamas operatives and stored weaponry; US officials were reported to have corroborated at least some intelligence about weapons and hostages in one case [7] [2].
2. Independent and media scrutiny: partial confirmation, serious doubts
Major news organizations and independent analysts parsed the materials and concluded that while tunnels or subterranean rooms did exist in some hospital complexes, the evidence did not prove the existence of the large command-and-control headquarters Israel initially described, and in several instances the linkage to hospital wards was unclear or contradicted by open-source imagery [3] [6] [9]. Fact-checkes and investigative reporting found examples where claimed tunnel shafts were ordinary infrastructure — for example, a hatch identified by Israeli forces at the Qatari Hospital was shown by Al Jazeera’s investigation to be a water reservoir rather than a weapons tunnel [4].
3. Subsequent reporting that revised or refined the record
The New York Times reported in February 2024 that Israeli intelligence suggested Hamas used at least parts of al-Shifa as cover and stored weapons there, but it also said the tunnel discovered did not match the Israeli narration of a sprawling command center beneath the hospital — a refinement that underscores how initial military messaging changed as reporters and analysts gained time to examine evidence [2]. Other outlets and experts similarly concluded that Israeli material often proved the existence of subterranean spaces or munitions but fell short of proving the most consequential claim — a hidden, full-scale headquarters under wards and operating theatres [3] [6].
4. Counterclaims, mistakes and possible motives to conflate findings
Investigations found at least some Israeli claims were inaccurate or overstated: reporting noted entrances or tunnels sometimes lay outside hospital footprints, were built in prior years (including infrastructure constructed by Israelis in earlier conflicts) or were misidentified, which raises questions about hurried public claims during combat and the incentive structure for militaries to justify strikes on protected medical facilities [10] [11] [4]. Critics and medical staff denied that hospitals served as command centers, and analysts warned footage can be spliced or staged, meaning the messaging needs corroboration beyond a single military video tour [12] [7].
5. Legal and evidentiary implications: proof vs. plausible inference
Under international humanitarian law, hospitals are protected unless used for acts harmful to the enemy, so the threshold of “proof” is high and requires clear, demonstrable linkage between combat functions and the protected facility; reporting shows some linkage in the form of weapons and tunnels in certain sites, but falls short of unambiguous proof that hospitals broadly functioned as Hamas command-and-control nodes — a distinction repeatedly noted by major outlets and legal analysts [3] [13]. Where reporting finds tunnels or weapons adjacent to hospitals it often stops short of proving that those underground features were integral command centers reached from patient wards or that they justified the scale of lethal force used.
6. Bottom line: what can be said with confidence and what remains unresolved
It is supported by multiple reputable reports that subterranean tunnels or rooms and some weapon caches were found in or near certain Gaza hospitals and that Israeli forces presented video evidence to that effect [1] [8] [2]. It is also established that several high-profile Israeli claims — especially the assertion of large-scale, hospital-integrated command centers beneath multiple hospitals — were challenged, disproved in at least one prominent instance, or remained unproven after independent scrutiny [4] [3] [6]. Therefore, there is partial evidence of tunnels and weapons in some cases but no universally accepted, incontrovertible proof in open reporting that Gaza hospitals generally housed the type of extensive command-and-control centers Israel first described.