Jennifer Cassidy, a legal expert from the University of Oxford, says targeting medical facilities is a war crime “plain and simple”. “Even if we take everything the Israeli government is saying to be true [about Hamas using al-Shifa], it is still a war crime because the proportionality and the outcome effect in relation to the gains they are achieving still is breaking international law. And they’re actually providing that evidence in real time.

They’re essentially making a case against themselves,” Cassidy told Al Jazeera. But she added: “Getting the Israeli government to stand before a tribunal will be extremely difficult.” Israel is justifying its mass killing of civilians in Gaza by declaring the “law of military necessity”, she noted. Asked why world powers have not stepped in to stop the carnage, she said it is “diplomacy being utterly hypocritical and having the most double standards we have ever seen regarding political crises”. “Diplomats are not acting with principle or morality.”

Dr. Jennifer A. Cassidy is a diplomatic scholar at the University of Oxford, where she lectures on Diplomacy and International Law, Digital Diplomacy, and Gender and Diplomacy.