Tel Aviv ignores int’l outcry, sets Rafah assault deadline
ignored a growing international outcry to threaten an invasion of southern Gaza’s Rafah by March if Hamas did not return the remaining Israeli captives.
The planned offensive, which now looks even more likely, will coincide with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan when the faithful observe daylong fasting.
With prospects for truce talks dimmed, the U.S. and other governments, as well as the United Nations, have issued increasingly urgent appeals to spare Rafah, where over a million Palestinians have sought shelter from Israel’s war.
The Israeli government says the city on the Egypt border is the last remaining stronghold in Gaza of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.
But it is also where three-quarters of the displaced Palestinian population has fled, taking shelter in sprawling tent encampments without access to adequate food, water or medicine.
“The world must know, and Hamas leaders must know – if by Ramadan our hostages are not home, the fighting will continue everywhere, including the Rafah area,” Benny Gantz, a retired military chief of staff, told a conference of American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem on Sunday.
‘TOTAL VICTORY’
“Hamas has a choice. They can surrender, release the hostages and the civilians of Gaza can celebrate the feast of Ramadan,” added Gantz, a member of the three-person war Cabinet.
Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, is expected to begin around March 10.
Gantz said the offensive will be carried out in coordination with American and Egyptian partners to “minimize the civilian casualties as much as possible.”
But where Palestinians can go after four months of war have flattened vast swathes of the Strip remains unclear.
For weeks, international mediators have sought to broker a truce-for-hostages deal that would pause fighting for six weeks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has played down the possibility of an impending breakthrough, calling Hamas’ demands “delusional.”
Even if a deal is struck, he insists the campaign to eliminate Hamas from Gaza will not be completed until clearing Rafah.
“Deal or no deal, we have to finish the job to get total victory,” he said at the Jerusalem conference Sunday.
‘CRYING FROM HUNGER’
Earlier Sunday morning, dozens of Israelis blocked Gaza-bound aid trucks from entering through the Nitzana crossing with Egypt, AFP reporters and
the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said.
Gazans say they are going so hungry they are grinding animal feed into flour.
“My children are starving, they wake up crying from hunger. Where do I get food for them?” a northern Gazan woman told AFP.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said nearly three in four people are drinking contaminated water.
“The speed of deterioration in Gaza is unprecedented,” it said.
After a weeklong siege, the largest hospital still functional in Gaza is no
longer operational, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
At least 20 of the 200 patients still at the Nasser Hospital urgently require relocation to other facilities, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, adding that his organization “was not permitted to enter” the site.
Seven patients, including a child, have died there since Friday due to power cuts, and “70 medical staff including intensive care doctors” have been arrested, according to the Gazan Health Ministry.