You just talk about that a little bit? Just from a military standpoint, in all wars, when there are civilians around and there are targets that are believed to be of military necessity, there are calculations essentially done about how valuable is the target, what is the risk of civilian loss, and how much civilian loss is acceptable. These are horrible calculations that are... But these are calculations that armies make during war. A situation like this, operating on the grounds in a hospital, has got to be extraordinarily difficult.

Sure, and you're exactly right, Anderson, about the way you cast it. You know what the target is, you know how valuable it is. You try to estimate what the risks are of hurting civilians, and then you have to make the judgment as whether the target going after the target, taking out the target, is worth the risk of injuring people who are innocent and not part of the enemy force. But here you're dealing with the command and control node of Hamas. You're dealing with Hamas that has deliberately cynically located its most valuable assets in a hospital, deliberately to try to provoke outrage in the world community and discredit Israel. Israelis know this. They've got really great intel on this. When those soldiers go in, in armor vehicles first and then dismantled into the buildings, and it is a very complex compound, as you saw from the overhead cover. They'll have helicopters, they'll have drones overhead, they'll be able to mark enemy positions with lasers, they'll be able to deliver precise fire if there is an opponent there, and then they've got to go inside. And if Hamas is there, yes, there could be a shootout in a hospital corridor, and they're going to have to get to the bottom of it, and they're going to have to search for the tunnel entrances around it.

So at every step, the soldier on the ground, the tank commander and so forth, is at risk. He's putting himself out there. He's likely to draw fire. He has the right to self-defense no matter what, always, and he's going to respond if he is attacked. But he's got a lot of assets back him up, a lot of other eyes on the battlefield. It's everything that can possibly be done to protect civilians and still go after the command and control at the hospital. And the Israelis, militarily, they have to do this.

One of the things I'm surprised there's not more outrage out internationally about is that Hamas had two years, say, to preparing this attack, or a year, however long it was. We don't know the exact amount of time that they've been preparing, but certainly they've been preparing for quite some time. They have not made any effort to build any bomb shelter for any civilian, it seems, in the Gaza Strip. They've built tunnels for themselves to store supplies and weapons and to protect themselves. But there are not bomb shelters, even the shelters that you see on the sides of the road in Israel by bus stops to protect against rockets. Those don't exist on the streets of Gaza. In your military experience, have you seen many countries or territories with a military that does not prepare or have some safe harbor for its civilians?

Well, no, but on the other hand, Hamas deliberately wants these civilians to be.

At risk. Well, that's the point, yes. But I still find it stunning that that doesn't seem to register with a lot of people.

Well, the thing about it, Anderson, is we call Hamas a terrorist organization, but it's actually the government of this Gaza Strip. They're in charge.

Of everything. They have had received hundreds of millions of dollars from Qatar and other places, and they have not built any bomb shelters for their people.

Right. Because they're not interested in protecting their people. They're interested in provoking international outrage against Israel. They knew that when they launched this attack, and they hoped to draw Israel in, bog Israel down, cause a lot of casualties, do exactly what they're doing with world opinion, have a lot of voices out there saying, Cease fire, cease fire, cease fire, and try to stop the Israeli assault and then declare victory. That's the goal. And so the more civilian casualties that the Israelis inflict, even though they don't want to inflict any, the greater Hamas believes its chances of success.

nick, it's accurate to say that the health officials in Gaza have denied repeatedly that Al-Shifah Hospital or others are being used by Hamas for any... I don't even want to call it military purposes, because for any of their own purposes.

They have. And it's something health officials in Qatar, Hamas-run, health officials say is true for other hospitals there. We've been speaking, CNN has been speaking with officials from the hospital over the last few days, and just going through our latest information on that, it appears the most recent, over the past couple of days, data that we have from the hospital itself, from our chief of hospital, they say there are about 7,000 civilians taking refuge there, or there were until recently. It's not clear how many of those might have left, and about 1,500 staff, 100 or so doctors, other medical officials, and included in that 1,500, of course, several hundred patients as well as support staff in the hospital. It's still a big complex, a complex, complex, and it still appears a significant number of people working there. You would have to assume that these health officials would have knowledge of the whole complex. There's a lot of people there and would have knowledge of the, if you will. There wouldn't be places that they wouldn't know about within the hospital complex. They continue to say Hamas isn't there. But I.

Mean, that's the ensuring thing about operating. Anybody who has operated, who has reported from Gaza, you see rockets being fired from civilians. You see rockets being fired from civilians. You see rockets being fired from the building where you're... The last time I was in Gaza, I could see where rockets were being fired from in buildings nearby me. Even the doctors in the hospitals know Hamas, as long as Jihad and others are firing rockets over their hospitals, but they don't speak out about it because they don't want to get killed. Obviously, nobody speaks out against Hamas for fear of their own safety. Maybe they agree with Hamas, maybe they don't. And a lot of people don't in Gaza, don't like Hamas, but people don't speak out. But people know. They know where the tunnel's locations are or where the rockets are being fired from. You can see it.

This is in a nutshell. Sorry, people are scared. When Hamas was voted in by the electorate in Gaza to power in 2007, they went round throwing out windows of high buildings, the political opposition. They might have won an election in 2006, but they've maintained control ever since through fear and intimidation. They might have a hardcore base of supporters there who genuinely believe in them, but the vast majority of people would not want to speak out against them, would fear speaking out against them. Like you, Anderson, I had been to Gaza and had those private conversations away from cameras with people who will tell you precisely that we are too afraid to speak out. Hamas has done this to me.

Hamas has done that to me and me and my family. The last time I was there, I watched as Hamas, two guys on motorbikes, dragged two human beings along on the ground, their legs tied together with rope or chains to the motorbikes, and they were dragging them through the streets as a warning to other people. I don't know what those people have been accused of, but they were Palestinians, and they were dead, and they were accused probably of being collaborators, and they dragged them through the streets as a warning to everybody else to stay silent and to not collaborate. We're over time. Nick Robertson, thank you, General Wesley-Clark. Thank you as well.