Israel plans to evacuate over 1m from Rafah
Israel is preparing to evacuate more than one million Palestinians from Rafah ahead of a planned ground invasion to uproot Hamas from the southern refuge city, according to reports.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) will spend the next two to three weeks moving civilians from the overcrowded city to places further north, including Khan Younis. The move comes ahead of a six-week military operation, according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal.
Tents, medical facilities and food distribution centres would be set up and the evacuation would be done in co-ordination with the United States, Egypt and other countries in the region, unnamed Egyptian officials told the paper.
The details of the plan have not been officially confirmed, but satellite images from Khan Younis, to the north of Rafah, show what appears to be work to set up a new tent city.
Rafah is believed to shelter 1.4 million people, most of whom had fled their homes in the north earlier on in the war. The US has previously said that Israel should not invade without a proper plan to safely evacuate them.
International aid organisations have also repeatedly warned that an all-out ground offensive would lead to massive loss of life and further compound the humanitarian catastrophe in the sealed-off enclave, where famine is believed to have begun.
But Israel has vowed to press ahead. “One, it’s going to happen. Two, we’re going to have a very tight operational plan because it’s very complex there. Three, there’s a humanitarian response that’s happening at the same time,” an Israeli security official was quoted as saying.
The IDF reportedly plans to move troops into Rafah gradually, targeting the areas in which it thinks Hamas’ remaining four battalions are hiding over six weeks.
Egyptian officials have publicly denied being involved or briefed on the plans.
But the satellite images from around Khan Younis show what appears to be clusters of tents constructed just outside the city. Images from three weeks ago show the compound significantly growing in size.
Earlier this month, satellite images from an area just to the west of the wall separating Rafah and Egypt also appeared to show Egyptians building a fortified buffer zone to take in displaced Palestinians.
Egypt has denied any plans to host Gaza’s residents, saying that opening the border to the Palestinians would only help Israel to displace them permanently.
Washington has recently hardened its tone on the proposed invasion. On Monday, Matthew Miller, a US State Department spokesperson, said: “We don’t want to see Palestinians evacuated from Rafah unless it is to return to their homes.
“There’s no way to conduct an operation in Rafah that would not lead to inordinate civilian hardship and would severely hamper the delivery of humanitarian aid.”
Rafah is crucial to the supply of aid into Gaza, with most food and medicines entering the strip through two border crossings near the city.
This week, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees said it had seen “very little significant change in the volume of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza or improved access to the north”, despite the Israeli government’s assurances to the contrary. – Telegraph Group