A large portion of the buildings that now make up the hospital were built by Israel when it ruled Gaza. It pulled out of the strip in 2005, opening a window for Hamas to take control, and by 2007 the militants had begun building the command center under Al Shifa, the Israeli officials said.
At first, Hamas simply dug out areas off the original basements of Al Shifa’s buildings, later going deeper and adding floors and connecting it to the vast network of reinforced tunnels it was building across Gaza, the officials said. They said it has since grown into one of the hubs of a vast tunnel system that crisscrosses Gaza.
A former senior official at Shin Bet, Israeli’s internal security service, said both Hamas and Israeli intelligence referred to the network as “the Metro” and compared the compound under Al Shifa to a major station of the New York subway system.
The former Shin Bet official and two other Israeli officials said the compound included several floors with designated spaces for meetings, living quarters and storage facilities. It can hold at least several hundred people, they said.