At roughly 1:30 Eastern Time on Monday, CNN reported a U.S. official confirmed what was widely suspected: Hamas has command headquarters underneath Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, which has been encircled by Israel Defense Forces.

At the same time, President Biden told reporters that the hospital “must be protected.”

“A US official with knowledge of American intelligence says Hamas has a command node under the Al-Shifa hospital, uses fuel intended for it and its fighters regularly cluster in and around Gaza’s largest hospital,” CNN reported, adding, “Hamas and hospital officials have denied the accusation that the hospital is being used as a command center.”

That followed National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stating on Sunday, “You can see even from open-source reporting that Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command-and-control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters. Without getting into this specific hospital or that specific claim, this is Hamas’ track record, both historically and in this conflict.”

Yet as the White House confirmed that Hamas has command headquarters under the hospital, Biden told reporters at the White House, “It’s my hope and expectation that there will be less intrusive action relative to the hospital. The hospital must be protected.”

Israel’s military operation in Gaza to root out Hamas follows the October 7th attack, in which Hamas terrorists slaughtered 1,400 Israelis in the worst massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on “CNN’s State of the Union”:

We have called to evacuate all the patients from that hospital. And, in fact, 100 or so have already been evacuated. I have called for field hospitals. … There’s no reason why we just can’t take the patients out of there, instead of letting Hamas use it as a command center for terrorism, for the rockets that they fire against Israel, for the terror tunnels that they use to kill Israeli civilians. … . Just imagine what would happen if the United States were attacked viciously by 20 9/11s, 20 — that’s the proportionate number — 50,000 Americans killed, 10,000 Americans held hostages, including babies, elderly, women, children, 10,000 rockets falling on your cities. That’s the number of rockets that are falling all the time on our cities, may fall during this interview, in fact, and we will have to go to a shelter. That’s what’s happening. 

So what would America do? It would take all its force and go after these killers. And what if these killers embed themselves in hospitals, in schools, in U.N. facilities? You do everything in your power to get the civilians out, which is what we’re doing. We call them to leave. But you certainly wouldn’t give immunity to the terrorists. So we’re obviously treading carefully when it comes to hospitals. But we’re also not going to give immunity to the terrorists.