Deep in Jerusalem, Israeli doctors are preparing for the worst.
Sky News has been given exclusive access to an underground hospital where they are expanding their capacity in case the current conflict worsens.
In a bunker beneath the Herzog Medical Center, the number of beds has been increased to 350, with 100 on the way.
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“Because it is built to resist biological and chemical attacks,” Dr Yehezkel Caine told Sky News as we entered the complex, “we have an airlock that is built with two separate sets of blast doors.”
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Further afield, they have installed a whole new level of wards beneath the existing underground hospital, tearing out a logistics floor and installing more beds and equipment.
The bunkers would be activated in case it was necessary to evacuate other hospitals closer to the front.
Here they are planning worst-case scenarios, like an all-out war with Hezbollah.
“Hospitals in the north will be overwhelmed by casualties and they themselves will be attacked, in which case they would have to evacuate their patients to the center of the country, just as we did in the first weeks of the war in the south,” he said. Dr. Caine.
He and his staff know that last year’s October 7 attack by Hamas and Iran’s missile and drone bombing earlier this month have changed everything for the people of Israel.
“For the civilian population, since the war of independence we have never been in a situation where the threat to the civilian population has been so great,” he said.
Two sets of armored doors form an airlock against biological and chemical attacks.
Above ground, Herzog Medical Center continues its peacetime specialties.
It has the largest ventilator unit in Israel, treating adults and children, but also excels in the treatment of psychotrauma and geriatric rehabilitation.
Many of those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from the trauma of this conflict receive treatment here.
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If Jerusalem itself is attacked, the hospital can evacuate even the most vulnerable to the bunkers below in just a few hours.
Bunkers can be completely sealed for 96 hours in what is called the Noah’s Ark procedure.
Herzog regularly trains his staff. Preparing for a reality he hopes never comes. But developments on the northern border appear ominous.
Israel has launched one of its largest bombing raids yet against Lebanon’s Hezbollah after multiple bombings against communities in northern Israel.
Low-level warfare continues with the ever-present danger of escalation into something much larger.
When the time comes, doctors at Jerusalem’s largest underground hospital say they will be ready.