UN chief visits Gaza border
As Israel vows to push ahead with Rafah offensive
PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrived at Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip on Saturday after Israel vowed to send its troops TO fiGHT HAMAS IN THE NEARBY CITY OF RAFAH, EVEN without the United States’ support.
During his visit, Guterres planned to reiterate his call for a humanitarian ceasefire, though renewed international pressure has so far failed to dissuade Israel from the planned ground offensive in Rafah, where most of Gaza’s population has taken refuge.
Despite warnings that such an operation would cause mass civilian casualties and worsen the humanitarian crisis gripping the Palestinian territory, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would press ahead with the attack.
“I hope to do that with the support of the United States, but if we need to, we will do it alone,” Netanyahu told visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday.
International efforts to pause the almost six months of fighting have intensified, with the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza reporting 32,070 people killed in the territory as of Friday and multiple UN warnings of imminent famine.
“This is a manmade catastrophe,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), wrote on X, formerly Twitter. He added that a ceasefire and “flooding Gaza with food + lifesaving goods” were the only solutions.
The latest bid for a Security Council resolution on an “immediate” ceasefire failed on Friday as China and Russia vetoed the American proposal, which Arab governments complained was too weak.
Diplomatic sources said a vote on a new, tougher ceasefire text, initially planned for Saturday, would be postponed until Monday to allow for further discussions.
While diplomats talked, violence continued, particularly around Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex, where Israeli forces said on Friday they had killed more than 150 Palestinian fighters and arrested hundreds of suspects during a dayslong military operation.
In a preliminary tally on Saturday morning, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported another 67 people killed overnight, including 10 in a strike on a home north of Gaza City.
At a funeral for the Barbakh family in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis on Friday, relatives lamented seemingly endless losses.
“At the beginning of the war, I lost my nephew, and now my sister, her husband and her children. Almost the entire family has perished,” Turkiya Barbakh said. “How long are we supposed to endure this?”
‘Defeat of Hamas’
On Saturday, Guterres planned to meet with aid workers on the Egyptian side of Rafah, just across the border from the Gazan city, where around 1.5 million Palestinians are taking shelter.
The city has become a matter of dispute between Israel and Washington.
“We have no way to defeat Hamas without getting into Rafah and eliminating the battalions that are left there,” Netanyahu said on Friday.
But Blinken said an invasion of Rafah was “not the way to achieve” that aim.
“We have the same goals as Israel: the defeat of Hamas,” the top American diplomat wrote on X after meeting with Netanyahu. “Next week, I will meet again with Israeli officials in Washington to discuss a different way we can achieve this objective.”
On his latest wartime tour of the region to support truce talks in Qatar, Blinken also expressed disappointment over the failed UN resolution.
He accused China and Russia of “cynically” using their vetoes, while Hamas expressed its “appreciation.”
As diplomats sparred in New York, Israel’s spy chief David Barnea headed to Qatar for negotiations with Central Intelligence Agency chief William Burns and Qatari and Egyptian officials.
The mediators are aiming to secure the release of Israelis still held by Gaza militants in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody and the delivery of more relief supplies.