The war inside Gaza: Mahmoud Shahin, a resident of the Gaza neighborhood and a dentist by profession, became an unexpected hero of his neighborhood after he claimed, backed by testimonies from many of his neighbors, that he called on hundreds of residents of the area to evacuate before the IDF bombed towers in the neighborhood.
IDF Attacks in the Gaza Strip | IDF Spokesperson
Shahin's story, published by the British news network BBC, allegedly began when he received a phone call in Arabic from a man who introduced himself as a representative of Israeli intelligence. The man told the doctor that he had to warn the residents of the neighborhood because a massive bomb would strike the area in two hours. "He told me they wanted to bomb three towers in the neighborhood and that he wanted me to evacuate the residents in the area," Shaheen told British media. "The voice, who spoke fluent Arabic, told me, 'We're going to bomb, you have to leave,'" the doctor said.
The man on the other end of the line asked Shahin not to hang up. The doctor consulted with his family and neighbors about what to do, and they suggested it might be a hoax or a fake. Shaheen allegedly asked the man on the other end of the line to fire a warning shot, and within a minute a small explosion was heard, apparently from a drone over the neighborhood. The Gazan man says that he later realized that his interlocutor was serious and began walking around the houses in the entire neighborhood and shouting at people to get out of their homes and leave.
Documentation: Gazans make their way south | IDF Spokesperson
Shaheen claims that during the conversation with the alleged operator, which lasted more than an hour, he tried to buy time to allow the evacuation of civilians. "Don't betray us, don't bomb before people can leave," he told his interlocutor. "I don't want to know that there was anyone I could have saved and I didn't," the dentist told British News. The BBC spoke to many residents of the neighborhood who confirmed Shaheen's claims.
According to the report, Shahin managed to save hundreds of neighborhood residents before the bombing began, and then watched his neighborhood razed to the ground. Shaheen said, "When the bombing stopped, the man called me again and said, 'We're done with the job, you can come back.'" The doctor's residential tower was not damaged in the bombing. The story, if true, demonstrates, among other things, the enormous intelligence effort carried out by the IDF, employing agents and locating elements on the ground, in order to avoid harming innocent people in the Gaza Strip. The BBC said it could not confirm from another source that a conversation had indeed taken place between Shahin and Israeli intelligence, but his statements were verified by other residents of his residence.
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