The Oct. 17 explosion at Gaza’s Al-Ahli Arab Hospital shook the world. With a civilian death toll reportedly in the hundreds, accusations were initially lobbed against Israel, which swiftly contradicted the allegation. The country asserted the explosion was instead caused by a faulty rocket fired from Gaza, later producing geospatial and audio evidence to support these claims.  

The ensuing information war captured global attention as Israel has previously been accused of targeting hospitals in Gaza and since attacking civilian hospitals can be a war crime under Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Multiple countries and media organizations have since corroborated Israel’s claim that the explosion was the result of a misfired rocket. Still, others cast doubts on Israel’s explanation, challenging their interpretation of video evidence and even going so far as to accuse the country of fabricating a conversation between Hamas operatives.

While the outside world is still uncertain of what exactly happened to the hospital, we can lay out the claims and counterclaims surrounding the explosion to build an idea of what occurred that night. In doing so, we will see that different entities with different interests offer different interpretations of the same evidence.

Initial Claims

When the Gazan health ministry announced the carnage at the hospital, it immediately laid blame on an Israeli airstrike — a claim that was later echoed by the Palestinian health ministry. Following this accusation, Israel said it was looking into the cause of the blast. Three and a half hours after the explosion, IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that a failed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) rocket hit the hospital.

The next day, the IDF released a diagram showing what it believes to be the rocket’s trajectory, aerial video of the blast site revealing less damage to the hospital grounds than expected, Al Jazeera footage showing a rocket explode and a ground blast at the time the hospital was hit, and an alleged phone conversation between two Hamas operatives discussing the rocket failure.

The West Weighs In

Soon after, US President Joe Biden said during his visit with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, “And based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not — not you.  But there’s a lot of people out there who are not sure.” US National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson later released a statement saying, “While we continue to collect information, our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday.”

On October 20, France’s Military Intelligence Directorate (DRM) said that a failed rocket was likely responsible for the blast. The intelligence agency said that the “hole” produced by the blast was more consistent with a 5-kilogram Palestinian rocket than an Israeli airstrike.

The next day, the Associated Press released an analysis concluding that an errant rocket likely hit the hospital. The news cooperative mainly substantiated its claim by reviewing Al Jazeera footage of a rocket being fired and, moments later, an explosion going off at the time the hospital was said to be hit. It also used other camera feeds and satellite imagery to determine that “rocket launches and [the] explosion were in the direction of Gaza City” and the explosion “larger explosion seen at 6:59 p.m. was in the precise direction of the hospital.” AP stated that the Al Jazeera footage showed a rocket breaking up during flight, piecing that with geographical evidence to substantiate the misfire theory.

Sunday, Canadian defence minister Bill Blair said that Canadian military intelligence analysis determined that “[t]he more likely scenario is that the strike was caused by an errant rocket fired from Gaza.” Blair made the announcement two days after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that Canada was not ready to accept Israel’s assertion that a PIJ rocket was responsible.

And on Monday, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced to the House of Commons that “[o]n the basis of the deep knowledge and analysis of our intelligence and weapons experts, the British Government judge that the explosion was likely caused by a missile, or part of one, that was launched from within Gaza towards Israel.” The Prime Minister also said that the initial media coverage of the blast, which he called misleading, undermined President Biden’s visit to Israel and inflamed tensions within the UK.

Skepticism Lingers

Despite several countries — the US, the UK, France, and Canada — and a major news organization having corroborated Israel’s version of events, some remain skeptical of the arguments and evidence presented in support of it.

Qatar’s Al Jazeera released two video investigations concerning the blast. One impugns Israel’s explanation by referring to an Israeli tweet alleging a Palestinian rocket struck the hospital. However, the tweet contained a video of rockets being launched in Gaza an hour after the strike occurred. Israel later edited the tweet to remove the footage. The other uses Al Jazeera footage to determine that airstrikes were occurring in Gaza around the time the blast occurred. It also uses the same feed used by the IDF and AP to claim that the rocket allegedly responsible for the blast was intercepted in the air.

Similarly, the UK’s Channel 4 released an investigation finding that the damage on the ground did not resemble a “ground detonating” airstrike but “doesn’t rule out an airburst munition.” It also included a comment from two Arabic-speaking journalists alleging that the audio Israel released purporting to be a Hamas phone call is fake due to inconsistencies in language use. Channel 4 also contradicts the claim in the audio that the missile was fired from a nearby cemetery, using Israel’s diagram released on the 18^th to show that the IDF claimed the missile was fired much further from the hospital than what the audio suggests.

Channel 4 also presented an analysis from NGOs Earshot, Forensic Architecture, and the Palestinian rights organization al-Haq. It contains assertions that audio from a verified video of the explosion shows that the missile was fired east of the hospital, that the alleged phone call was digitally manipulated beyond credibility and that photographic evidence of the crater shows that the projectile hit the hospital from the northeast instead of the southwest.

Conclusion: What Do We Make of This?

While all of these assertions are too preliminary to be wholeheartedly believed, we can examine common themes. Nearly all parties who took stances on the matter relied on open-source video to form a viewpoint. It is even notable that the IDF, AP, and Al Jazeera all used the same footage to reach different conclusions. We can also see that western intelligence is, expectedly, reluctant to share their source material. France was the most forthcoming country in this regard as it provided specifics of which projectile it believes the hospital, but it did not share the specific evidence used to examine the impact. Moreover, the skeptical examinations tend to unfavorably scrutinize evidence provided by Israel to call the failed launch narrative into question.

This overview highlights two overarching questions that will guide further debates on this issue: What does the open-source evidence show, and how can the public separate evidence from misinformation?

JURIST Assistant Editor Grant Ellis contributed research to this article.