How seriously should we take US intelligence claims on Gaza?

Since the beginning of Israel's siege and bombardment of the Gaza Strip the Biden Administration has sought to bolster Israeli claims surrounding its own operations in Gaza which has so far killed 11,500 people – most of whom are women and children.

The claims, however, have either been rolled back by the administration or have received scepticism or outright refutation over the lack of evidence or falsehoods.

The New Arab has taken a look at the most notorious claims by the US since the start of the conflict.

Al-Shifa hospital

The administration's most recent claims surround the Al-Shifa medical complex, the largest collection of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, that was raided by the Israeli army on Wednesday.

On Thursday, White House Spokesperson John Kirby stated that the US had intelligence that supports Israel's justification for the besiegement and storming of al-Shifa hospital, which Israel claims is used as a command-and-control centre for Hamas armed wing the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

"We have our own intelligence that convinces us that Hamas was using al Shifa as a command and control noted, and most likely as well as a storage facility," he said. Both Hamas hospital staff and aid agencies working at the complex, including members of Doctors without Borders, have denied the claims.

Since the raid, the "evidence" of the intelligence has so far not come to fruition, with footage published by Israel only showing weapons and a laptop rather than an extensive tunnel network and command centre which Israel had proclaimed to be under the hospital.

Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital

Earlier in the conflict the US claimed that a strike on the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in northern Gaza that, according to Gaza's health ministry, killed 471 people was the result of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) rocket.

According to a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, US intelligence "assess[ed] that the explosion was caused by a failed rocket launched by Palestinian militants."

Israel initially used footage from Al Jazeera taken from when the strike occurred to prove its claim that the strike was a PIJ rocket.

However, investigative publication Forensic Architecture investigated both the impact of the crater and Israeli's evidence, eventually concluding that "as it stands, Israel has yet to provide any conclusive evidence to support the claim that the source of the deadly blast at the al-Ahli hospital was a PIJ or Hamas rocket".

Beheaded dead babies

In addition to the hospital strikes, US President Joe Biden claimed that he had seen "confirmed pictures of terrorists, beheading children," adding to claims from Israeli soldiers that during Hamas' attack on 7 October, which killed around 1,200 Israelis according to Israel, babies had been beheaded in Kfar Aza.

President Biden's comments were later retracted by The White House, which clarified to The Washington Post that "President Joe Biden and other US officials have not seen or independently confirmed that Hamas terrorists beheaded Israeli children."

The Israeli government also retracted claims from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it could not confirm the claims of the beheadings.

Initial claims of the beheading arose after Israeli soldiers told Israeli news channel I24News that they had seen babies with "their heads cut off." 

Gaza health ministry figures

As well as claims that babies were beheaded President Joe Biden also expressed doubt on casualty figures that had been released by Gaza's Ministry of Health.

During a press conference at the White House on 25 October Biden stated "I'm sure innocents have been killed, and it's the price of waging a war. But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using."

His comments were refuted on 27 October by the Gaza Ministry of Health, which released a compiled list of the 6,747 names of men, women and children who have been killed by Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

The ministry stated they had "decided to announce the details of the names to the whole world so that the truth is known about the genocide perpetrated by the Israeli occupation against our people."

The US State Department’s highest official for Middle East affairs, Barbara Leaf, went as far as to suggest that the civilian death toll in Gaza was likely higher than estimates suggest.

Last week, Leaf said: "We think they’re very high, frankly, and it could be that they’re even higher than are being cited" in response to scepticism over the numbers released by the Gaza Health Ministry.