>What is the significance of this?

There is none. Just more noise in press than usual because AP was sitting in the building.

>Why would Israel bomb this building and tell people to evacuate?

Because Israel interested in taking out whatever Hamas physical assets there are in the building and not in killing civilians

> Is it normal for them to announce evacuation?

Yeap. Usually whoever occupies building get phone calls and SMSes hour or two upfront. This is usually followed by a "roof knocking" with specially developed munition that makes a lot of noise. Only after this bombing commences

I've yet to see any evidence of the importance of the building other than the fact it housed the press. What does Israel gain from bombing the building other than suppressing and disrupting the media? What physical asset could have possibly been in that building that could not have been relocated in the preceding hour?!

It housed some hamas offices. Even if they took out some computers, disrupting operations (communication, etc) still achieves targets.

Given modern technology (satellite and mobile links), it's hardly possible to "suppress and disrupt the media" as everybody can see. If there is somebody who does suppression of media in gaza it will be hamas: wrong reporting and you are in best case expelled an in worst case dead.

What you said about disrupting operations in the building applies to the media organizations in the building, too. There is a gaping logical chasm between these two statements:

> Even if they took out some computers, disrupting operations (communication, etc) still achieves targets.

> Given modern technology (satellite and mobile links), it's hardly possible to "suppress and disrupt the media" as everybody can see.

There is difference between media (uploading random articles and video segments) and military operations (secured communication facilities, etc.)

Disrupting media operations by blowing up their facilities and equipment is clearly deleterious to their ability to report news. You claim that media organizations are largely unaffected but speculate that Hamas operations in the same building are affected. I find it difficult to wrap my head around the mental gymnastics required to believe those two things simultaneously.

It's like saying without evidence, "Verizon's operations in the World Trade Center were basically unaffected on 9/11, but Morgan Stanley's operations there were crippled."

There is a difference between media uploading media files and posting articles and for example intelligence/command center that have physical termination of multiple, physical secure lines of communications.

Media can take their laptops, get out and keep on uploading stuff 5 minutes later.

In case of intelligence/command center it will takes weeks to bring all the physical lines to new "secure" location in the city and to get/hookup whatever equipment is used to terminate them.

All accounts of phone calls I've seen indicate that they come just a few minutes before the attack. E.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/world/middleeast/by-phone... Roof knocking sometimes kills people directly, and it's not like they wait to make sure people have left before the main attack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof_knocking

>All accounts of phone calls I've seen indicate that they come just a few minutes before the attack

Probably warning time proportional to building size. Over last few days few 13 floors buildings went down with zero casualties and there were multiple recordings of it filmed from cameras positioned on tripods. It's not something that you can do with "few minutes warning before attack"

They have to pretend to have some humanitarian concerns. As for why they did it, the notice pretty much sums it up. To prevent media coverage. They also bomb schools, hospitals, and apartment buildings because a member of the locally elected government might have stopped by one time five years ago.

because that's how they do things.

Terrorist organizations ("elected" or not) don't usually contain themselves to just their evil bases and well defined areas.

Given that Israel believes this is a legitimate target against Hammas (whether it contains intelligence, weapon caches or weapon manufacturing), the target itself are not the people occupying it. That's why, in order to minimize casualties while still operating a war effort, they notify and allow ample time to evacuate the building

APs vague "we were notified" and "narrowly evacuated" is an exaggeration, they were notified by the Israelis themselves and given time to evacuate (that's why they don't mention any casualties in that story, since they probably don't exist). You could argue that no (primarily or not) civilian targets should be attacked ever but that's another subject

It's common for them to announce evacuation, yeah.

The government in Gaza has been firing rockets at Israel for the past few days; Israel says that this attack is a direct military response to the rockets, although (as you can see upthread) others dispute that story.

People can leave in an hour. Equipment cannot, or at least not all equipment.

It is standard operating procedure for Hamas to operate communication, command and control centers inside tall residential buildings. For example to synchronize 100 rocket launches to overwhelm iron done protection.

Since 500+ missiles are still being launched daily at Israeli civilian cities, Israel is slowly but methodically destroying any means necessary to launch those missiles.

You made an account just to describe Hamas SOP, with no citations nor credentials. This is your first and only comment on HN.

Seems fishy.