Beirut Hospital Evacuates After Israel Accuses Hezbollah of Stashing $500 Million Underneath
Lebanese health officials denied there was a bunker filled with cash and gold; Israel said the accusation is based on solid intelligence
BEIRUT—When Israeli military officials said this week that Hezbollah had stashed $500 million in gold and cash underneath a Beirut hospital, the accusation set off a scramble to evacuate the large medical facility out of fear it would be bombed.
Two days later, Al-Sahel Hospital still stands, though empty of patients and staff. And a debate is raging over whether there are any Hezbollah funds under the medical center, with Lebanese officials vehemently denying the accusation.
The Lebanese Army has launched its own investigation into the claims. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin weighed in on Tuesday, saying Israel hadn’t provided evidence of its assertion.
Israeli officials have stood by their allegation, saying that military intelligence found the presence of the bunker full of cash and that they are certain of the finding. In the past month, Israel has shown that its intelligence has penetrated Hezbollah thoroughly, pulling off deadly attacks with explosive-laden pagers and walkie-talkies, and killing much of the group’s leadership including its top leader Hasan Nasrallah inside a bunker.
Israel said it had refrained from striking the hospital when it hit other Hezbollah-linked economic targets on Monday, which included airstrikes on a nonprofit bank linked to Hezbollah and a separate underground vault of cash and gold used by another bank linked to the group, Al-Qard Al-Hassan. Israeli officials have said they are trying to undermine the group’s finances and base of political support.
“The Israeli air force is monitoring the compound, however we will not strike the hospital itself,” Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said during a news conference on Monday night.
During the news conference, Hagari showed a video that Israel created to illustrate the bunker below Al-Sahel hospital and said it includes “rooms, beds, and infrastructure for long stays and the ability to direct combat from underground,” and a vault with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold.
Israeli officials told the public where to look for the money, issuing a set of instructions for where to find a tunnel shaft to what it said was a Hezbollah bunker accessible through a building adjacent to the hospital. The Israeli military hasn’t said what it intended to achieve by drawing attention to the alleged bunker.
Wall Street Journal reporters visited both Al-Sahel Hospital and one of the two adjacent buildings where the Israeli military said the tunnel could be entered. Journal reporters found the door of a nonfunctioning elevator in the basement location where Israeli officials said one entrance would be.
Fearing an impending Israeli strike on the area, workers raced to clear out buildings near the hospital on Wednesday. A group of men hauled away oxygen tanks from a clinic while another piled women’s clothing from a storefront into a motorized cart.
Al-Sahel’s director general, Dr. Mazen Alame, called the allegations about a Hezbollah bunker with money under his hospital false. He called the allegations “a direct threat not only to us but to the health system in Lebanon. It’s like dominoes. If we close, the other hospitals will start to close.”
Nearly 50 staff members, including some who had taken shelter in the hospital after fleeing their homes nearby, and about a dozen patients scrambled to leave the facility after Israel first unveiled its claim of the underground stash on Monday night, said Alame.
Alame and other hospital officials, along with half a dozen people in the area interviewed by The Wall Street Journal said they had seen no evidence of any tunnels underneath the hospital and adjacent buildings, which they said also house offices of people opposed to Hezbollah. The private hospital isn’t affiliated with Hezbollah or any other political party, and also functions as a teaching facility, Alame said.
“Hezbollah doesn’t want you to find the money, so 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,” said Nadav Shoshani, another Israeli military spokesman.
Within Beirut, the claim spread further fear and anxiety in a city that has been shaken by a campaign of airstrikes that have emptied much of the southern Shiite-majority section of the city and brought down apartment blocks across the capital.
At the building next door to the hospital, which the Israeli military identified as containing an entrance to the bunker, lawyers, doctors, and others with offices in the building watched with dismay as workmen carted away clothes, files, and medical equipment on Wednesday. Strikes nearby had shattered the windows of the building, leaving shards of glass that crunched underfoot.
“This is my life’s work that’s here, and I can’t get everything out all at once,” said Diaa Eddin Zibara, a lawyer and co-owner of the building. “It’s going to be a huge loss even if I can get some valuables out.”
The Israeli claims came as pressure is mounting on the Lebanese healthcare system as a whole. Another Israeli strike on Monday night destroyed several buildings across the street from the nearby Rafiq Hariri University Hospital, killing at least 18 people, Lebanese officials said. Rescue workers searching for missing people dug through a mountain of concrete on Wednesday. The strike blew out the windows of the nearby hospital. Rescue workers said they had found a single severed leg at the site on Wednesday.
Israel said the strike was directed at a terrorist target near the hospital and the hospital wasn’t hit. “The hospital was not targeted, and the hospital itself and its operation were not affected,” the military said.
The World Health Organization said earlier this month that it verified 23 attacks on healthcare facilities and workers since Israel intensified its military campaign in September. The attacks led to 72 deaths and 43 injuries among health workers and patients, the WHO said. In areas affected by the conflict in Lebanon, nearly half of 207 primary health centers have closed, the U.N. body said.
Brian Finucane, a former State Department official who is now a senior adviser at International Crisis Group, said the U.S. military has in recent years struck cash reserves used by Islamic State on the grounds that the money could sustain the group’s war effort because it could use it to pay fighters. The U.S. views strikes on economic and financial targets as legitimate only when there is a direct connection to a war-sustaining activity, he said.
“Israel has not provided enough information about the nature of these funds or how they would be used,” he said. “They’ve got a lot of work to do to establish that this stuff is there and the loot, if it exists, meets the standard for being a lawful military objective,” he said.