Israel urged: Don’t pursue Rafah assault
PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: Israel’s vow to push ahead with a “powerful” operation in the southern Gazan city of Rafah was met with a growing chorus of international condemnation on Thursday, with leaders warning against the catastrophic consequences for the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped there.
Australia, Canada and New Zealand warned Israel “not to go down this path,” issuing a rare joint statement in the latest urgent appeal seeking to avert more mass civilian casualties.
“An expanded military operation would be devastating,” they said. “There is simply nowhere else for civilians to go.”
Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have been driven into Rafah by Israel’s relentless military campaign, seeking shelter in a sprawling makeshift encampment near Egypt’s border.
Despite pressure from foreign governments and aid agencies not to invade, Israel insists it must push into Rafah and eliminate Hamas battalions.
“We will fight until complete victory and this includes a powerful action also in Rafah after we allow the civilian population to leave the battle zones,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement on Wednesday.
His threats of an imminent incursion come as mediators race for a truce in the four-month-old war, which has flattened vast swathes of Gaza, displaced most of the territory’s population and pushed people to the brink of starvation.
Should the Israeli assault on Rafah go ahead, the risk of atrocities is “serious, real and high,” Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the United Nations’ special adviser on the prevention of genocide, said on Wednesday.
‘Delusional demands’
In Cairo, mediators from the United States, Qatar and Egypt are seeking to broker a deal that would suspend fighting and see the release of the roughly 130 hostages still in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
“Israel did not receive in Cairo any new proposal of Hamas on the release of our hostages,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement following Israeli media reports that the country’s delegation was told not to rejoin negotiations until Hamas softens its stance.
While he did not comment directly on the reports, the premier said: “I insist that Hamas drop their delusional demands, and when they drop these demands, we can move forward.”
On Tuesday, Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns joined the talks with David Barnea, head of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad, while a Hamas delegation was in Cairo on Wednesday.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas, who governs the Israeli-occupied West Bank, called on Hamas to “rapidly” agree to a truce and stave off further tragedy for Palestinians.
Hospitals ‘besieged’
While truce negotiations entered their third day, Israel’s military continued its bombardment of Gaza.
On Thursday, the Hamas-run Health Ministry there said 107 people, “mostly women and children,” were killed in overnight attacks.
One person was killed and several wounded in the shelling on Nasser Hospital’s orthopedics department, it added.
The medical facility, the largest in southern Gaza, has been the site of heavy fighting for weeks.
Doctors Without Borders has condemned the Israeli military’s order to evacuate thousands of patients, staff and displaced people from the hospital.
The aid organization said its staff were continuing to treat patients there “amid near impossible conditions.”
Nurse Mohammed al-Astal told AFP the facility had been “besieged” for a month, with no food or drinking water left.
“At night, tanks opened heavy fire on the hospital and snipers on the roofs of buildings surrounding Nasser Hospital opened fire and killed three displaced people,” he said.
The World Health Organization has said it was denied access to the hospital and lost contact with its staff there, while its Palestine representative Rik Peeperkorn said most of the UN agency’s mission requests have been denied since January.
Speaking from Rafah, Peeperkorn said Gaza’s hospitals were “completely overwhelmed,” adding that patients were frequently undergoing unnecessary amputations of limbs that could have been saved under ordinary circumstances.