A ‘safe passage’ for Palestinians
PLEDGE: NETANYAHU HAS ‘DETAILED PLAN’ FOR DISPLACED
Alarm as Israeli army readies to enter last population centre.
The threat of an Israeli incursion into Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah persisted yesterday, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised “safe passage” to civilians displaced there.
In an interview aired yesterday, he reiterated his intention to extend Israel’s military operation against Hamas into Rafah.
Despite international alarm over the potential for carnage in a place crammed with more than half of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people, Netanyahu told ABC
News: “We’re going to do it while providing safe passage for the civilian population so they can leave,” he said, according to published extracts of the interview.
It remains unclear however, where the large number of people pressed up against the border with Egypt and sheltering in makeshift tents can go.
When asked, Netanyahu would only say Israel was “working out a detailed plan”.
As Israeli forces have pushed steadily south, Rafah has become the last major population centre in Gaza that troops have yet to enter, even as it is bombarded by air strikes almost daily.
“They said Rafah is safe, but it is not. All places are being targeted,” Palestinian Mohammed Saydam said after an Israeli strike destroyed a police vehicle in the city on Saturday.
Netanyahu, who says “victory” over Hamas cannot be achieved without clearing battalions in Rafah, directed his military on Friday to prepare for the operation.
His announcement set off a chorus of concern from world leaders and aid groups.
“The people in Gaza cannot disappear into thin air,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on social media platform X. She said that an Israeli offensive on Rafah would be a “humanitarian catastrophe in the making”.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry warned of “very serious repercussions of storming and targeting” Rafah and called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting.
UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said he was “deeply concerned” about the prospective offensive. –