But no-one else can find it
By Middle East correspondent Matthew Doran, Cherine Yazbeck, and Orly Halpern, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Oct 26, 2024
When the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) this week claimed that Hezbollah had a secret bunker stuffed with $US500 million ($753 million) in gold and cash under a Beirut hospital, it set off a frenzy of speculation and panic.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari took to his lectern on October 21, armed with what he said were declassified details on the group’s finances, including the subterranean treasure chest.
It comes one month into a war between Hezbollah and Israel, which erupted after a year of cross-border exchanges.
Hezbollah, a proscribed terrorist organisation in Australia, has been exchanging rocket fire with Israel since the Hamas-led terrorist attack into southern Israel on October 7.
Much has been said about Hezbollah’s use of subterranean tunnel networks, alleged to help the group carry out its operations away from the threat of Israeli planes and drones flying in the skies above Lebanon.
But this message was different, with Rear Admiral Hagari showing a 3D animation of what he said was a facility hidden beneath Al-Sahel Hospital.
The hospital’s management quickly evacuated the building, fearing a potential air strike, but invited media in Beirut to come and take a look.
Visiting journalists said they found no evidence of the bunker or its concealed entrances, but the IDF insists they are simply looking in the wrong place.
Here’s what we know.
What is Israel claiming?
Armed with slick animations of the bunker layout, Rear Admiral Hagari said it was used by the former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed three weeks earlier.
Amid the IDF’s campaign striking branches of the Al-Qard al-Hassan bank, which it said was used by Hezbollah to pay its fighters and buy weapons, Rear Admiral Hagari insisted there was another stash of funds the group had squirrelled away.
Cash and gold smuggled into the country from Iran, Rear Admiral Hagari said, was hidden across the country — as well as in the capital of Beirut.
“Tonight I am going to declassify intelligence on a site that we did not strike, where Hezbollah has millions of dollars in gold and cash — in Hassan Nasrallah’s bunker,” he said.
“Where is the bunker located? Directly under Al-Sahel Hospital, in the heart of Beirut, in the Dahiyeh.”
Rear Admiral Hagari said the entries and exits to the bunker were in neighbouring buildings, referring to the animation of its layout — even adding a Hezbollah poster on the computer-generated walls.
“It contains rooms, beds and infrastructure for long stays, and the ability to direct combat from underground,” Rear Admiral Hagari said.
“Hezbollah built this bunker directly underneath this hospital.
“There are hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold inside the bunker right now,” he claimed, as the video showed piles of wads of cash and bars of bullion appeared.
The Israeli Air Force was monitoring the site, according to its spokesman, but would “not strike the hospital itself”.
How did the hospital respond?
Al-Sahel Hospital said it was shocked to have been drawn into the fray, inviting journalists to tour the facility and see first hand what was and was not there.
One correspondent from German broadcast DW entered the neighbouring buildings in search of the bunker entry and exit.
He did not find them, and others who scoured the hospital also failed to find any evidence of the bunker.
The hospital said its two underground levels housed kitchens, operating theatres, the morgue, and generators.
The Sahel Healthcare Group runs the hospital, and its chairman Fadi Alame said patients had to be evacuated from the facility as fears rose Israel was planning an attack.
“They were baseless accusations intended to affect the health care services in the area and to close down every single medical facility in the southern suburbs of Beirut,” he told the ABC.
The IDF has been targeting suburbs such as Dahiyeh, in Beirut’s south, because of its closer ties to Hezbollah.
“As far as those graphics, they don’t even look like the hospital and obviously it’s a very big lie.”
Mr Alame’s father founded the hospital, and accused the IDF of trying to target Lebanese healthcare facilities in the same way it had done so in Gaza.
“So many hospitals are operating under severe stress, and they’re suffering from over capacity due to the closure of so many medical facilities in the south and in Beirut,” he said.
“That means probably more diseases, maybe more complications affecting the lives and the quality of lives of the people.”
The IDF stands by its claim
The IDF was quick to reject the suggestions it had fabricated the intelligence, pointing the ABC to a series of social media posts from its international spokesperson.
Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said there was a reason journalists had not found the entrance to the bunker.
“Hezbollah prevented reporters from entering the building with the southern entrance shaft,” he posted on X, formerly Twitter.
“They are likely blocking and hiding the entrance to the bunker in various ways, possibly by building walls to obscure the entrances to the bunker, which holds half a billion dollars in gold and cash.”
Lieutenant Colonel Shoshani suggested other media outlets had wasted their time touring the basement of the Al-Sahel hospital, because the IDF had never suggested that was where the entrance to the facility was located.
US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said he had “not seen evidence” of the bunker existing.
“We’ll continue to collaborate with our Israeli counterparts to gain better fidelity on exactly what they’re looking at,” he told reporters in Rome.
Why the IDF’s claim is being heavily scrutinised
Analysts who spoke to the ABC say they believe the reason for such a campaign, even if it cannot be proven, is about eroding trust.
“I don’t think that people necessarily believe all these claims,” David Wood from the International Crisis Group told the ABC.
“But if people in these Hezbollah aligned communities no longer have faith that they’ll be able to safely access civilian infrastructure like hospitals, that creates pressure on Hezbollah.
“Its appeal is not just based on an ideological narrative of resistance against Israel, but it’s also ensuring that if you’re in a Hezbollah aligned community, you will have access to basic essentials.”
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute in Washington DC said the scrutiny being applied to this claim by the IDF was different to others through the course of the war in Gaza.
“Unlike Gaza, they do not control who goes in and out of Lebanon,” he said.
“So access for journalists to be able to verify these claims is much easier in Lebanon than it has been in Gaza.
“These statements at this point are no different, and should not be treated any different, from when Trump claims that immigrants have been eating cats and dogs in neighbourhoods in Ohio.”
He believes that in the long run, Israel would have to care more about being called out for spreading such claims.
“If the scrutiny is done, then the pressure will increase, and that will matter to the Israelis,” Mr Parsi said.
“It is easy for the Israelis not to care about pressure when hardly any pressure actually is exerted.
“It’s really difficult to point to any clear pressure that has been put on Israel by the United States and certainly not from Europe.”
Israeli military accusing hospitals of being secret havens isn’t new
In Gaza, Israel has made similar claims about a number of hospitals.
Back in November 2023, Israel said that under Al-Shifa, Gaza’s biggest hospital, was Hamas’ “central command centre”.
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IDF soldiers who entered the hospital found a few rifles and ammunition, and an investigation by The Washington Post found that the IDF claims held little water.
There were underground floors, but no Hamas command centre.
Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak revealed to CNN that Israel had helped build underground rooms.
“It was probably five or four decades ago that we helped [the Palestinians] to build these bunkers in order to enable more space for the operation of the hospital within the very limited size of this compound,” he said
Earlier this month, a United Nations commission of inquiry released a report accusing Israel of perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity in a “concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system”.
The UN Human Rights Office said Israel’s attacks destroyed Gaza health facilities, its soldiers detained and tortured medical personnel, and targeted medical vehicles during its ongoing war against Hamas.
Hospitals have protected status according to Article 8 of the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court.
The only exception for hospitals is if they commit acts that are “harmful to the enemy,” in which case it can be considered a legitimate target.
But if there is ever a doubt, the presumption, under international humanitarian law, is that the site is protected.
The onus to prove a site has lost its protected status is on the attacker, wrote ICC Special Prosecutor Kareem Khan in an Op-Ed in The Guardian.
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“The burden of demonstrating that this protective status is lost rests with those who fire the gun, the missile, or the rocket in question.”
Fadi Alame, who is also the chairperson of the Lebanese parliament’s foreign relations committee, said discussions were underway about whether the country’s health ministry would file lawsuits against Israel alleging war crimes for encouraging and committing strikes against hospitals.
“This kind of accusation with intended purpose of shutting down and affecting the healthcare system in Lebanon — this is cheap, this is very cheap, and I will pursue and I will reserve my right for any legal actions in the future.”
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