Israeli forces begin assault on Rafah
• Guterres warns of looming humanitarian nightmare
Doha/Tel Aviv — Israeli forces on Thursday bombed parts of the southern border city of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population is sheltering, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a Hamas proposal to end the war in the Palestinian enclave.
Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Hamas ceasefire terms were “delusional” and vowed to fight on, saying victory was in reach and just months away.
The rejection followed intense diplomacy to end the four-and-a-half-month conflict before a threatened Israeli assault on Rafah, now home to more than a million people, many in makeshift tents and lacking food and medicine.
Aid agencies have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe if Israel enters one of the last areas of the Gaza Strip its troops have not entered during its ground offensive.
UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that pushing into Rafah on the border with Egypt would “increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences”.
Israel says it takes steps to avoid civilian casualties and accuses Hamas militants of hiding among civilians, including at school shelters and hospitals, leading to more civilian deaths. Hamas denies this.
Israeli planes bombed areas in Rafah on Thursday morning, residents said, killing at least 11 people in strikes on two houses. Tanks shelled parts of eastern Rafah, intensifying residents’ fear of a ground assault.
Inside Rafah, mourners wept over bodies of those killed in an air strike that hit the Tel AlSultan neighbourhood.
“Suddenly in the blink of an eye, rockets fell on children, women, and elderly men. What for? Why? Because of the coming ceasefire? Usually before any ceasefire this happens,” said resident Mohammed Abu Habib.
Emad, a father of six sheltering in Rafah after fleeing his home elsewhere, said the greatest fear was a ground assault with nowhere left to run. “We have our backs to the [border] fence and faces toward the Mediterranean,” he said. “Where should we go?”
Despite Israel’s rejection of the Hamas proposal, more talks are planned. US secretary of state Antony Blinken, who shuttled between mediators in pursuit of a deal this week on his fifth trip to the region since the start of the war, said he still saw room for negotiations.
In a late-night press conference in a Tel Aviv hotel on Wednesday, Blinken said elements of the Hamas proposal contained clear “nonstarters”, without saying what they were.
Blinken also said that the civilian death toll was still too high and reiterated that Israel’s military operation should put civilians first and foremost.
“And that’s especially true in the case of Rafah, where there are somewhere between 1.2and 1.4-million people, many of them displaced from other parts of Gaza.”
Blinken said he suggested ways to minimise harm in talks with Israeli leaders but gave no details. He left for the US on Thursday afternoon.
A Hamas delegation led by senior official Khalil Al-Hayya arrived in Cairo on Thursday for ceasefire talks with mediators Egypt and Qatar.
The delegation is expected to meet Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel and the team managing Egypt’s mediation on Gaza, said Egyptian security sources.
Speaking in Nicosia, Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry said Egypt was working with all stakeholders to find a solution to end the conflict and urged the international community to apply more pressure to allow aid into Gaza.
Jordan’s King Abdullah has also embarked on a diplomatic mission aimed at ending the war. His visits to Western capitals will include a meeting with US President Joe Biden.
Hamas, which governs Gaza, proposed a ceasefire of fourand-a-half months, when all hostages held in Gaza would go free, Israel would withdraw its troops and agreement would be reached on an end to the war. The Hamas offer was a response to a proposal drawn up by US and Israeli spy chiefs and delivered to Hamas last week by Qatar and Egypt.
Hamas says it will not agree to any deal that does not include an end to the war and Israeli withdrawal. Israel says it will not withdraw or stop fighting until Hamas is eradicated.
Israel began its military offensive after Hamas militants from Gaza killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages in southern Israel on October 7, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s military said on Thursday that in the past day its troops killed more than 20 militants in Gaza’s main southern city Khan Younis, now the scene of some of the war’s most intense fighting. It said it apprehended dozens of suspected militants, including two suspected of involvement in the October 7 attack. Seventy-one detainees arrested earlier were released.
Hamas’ health ministry says at least 27,840 Palestinians were confirmed killed, and more than 67,000 injured.