‘RAFAH ATTACK WOULD CAUSE HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE’
▶ Israel urged to halt offensive as UNRWA chief travels to Brussels and CIA director joins truce talks
An Israeli attack on Rafah, the last city in Gaza not part of its ground offensive, would cause a “humanitarian catastrophe”, an EU official has said.
Foreign minister Josep Borrell urged the Israelis to return to the negotiating table. “An Israeli offensive on Rafah would lead to an unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe and grave tensions with Egypt,” he wrote on X. “Resuming negotiations to free hostages and suspend hostilities is the only way to avert a bloodshed.”
Israel has intensified strikes on Rafah in the past week, Maha Hussaini, the strategy director of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, told The National.
“Many densely populated areas with refugees are extensively targeted, resulting in the daily killing of dozens of residents,” she said.
The Gaza death toll has risen to 28,176, its Health Ministry said. Hamas killed about 1,200 Israelis in its October 7 attack, taking 240 hostages.
Saudi Arabia warned of “serious repercussions” if Rafah, currently home to about 1.5 million Palestinians, was attacked.
Palestinian Amna Ghaban, 46, fled to Rafah from Beach refugee camp with her family. “We are experiencing the worst time anyone can live through,” she told The National.
The situation has been made worse by funding freezes to UN aid agency UNRWA over Israeli claims some of its staff were involved in the October 7 attack.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini is in Brussels today to urge countries to resume donations. “We are doing everything possible so that hopefully our donors that suspended funding will reconsider,” said Juliette Touma, UNRWA director of communications.
Efforts continue to find an agreement to end the fighting, sources said. The US, led by CIA director William Burns, will resume talks in Cairo tomorrow with Egyptian, Qatari and Israeli intelligence chiefs.
Fears are growing over a looming Israeli ground incursion into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, where more than half of the enclave’s population has sought refuge from the war.
An air strike killed at least 25 people in Rafah yesterday morning, Palestinian media reported, after 42 were killed in the city on Saturday.
On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military to prepare to evacuate civilians from Rafah before entering the city.
He told military and security officials to “submit to the cabinet a combined plan for evacuating the population and destroying the battalions” of Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza, his office said on Friday.
Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly said that the war will not end until Hamas is destroyed. Israel began its air and ground campaign in Gaza on October 7 when Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took 240 hostages during attacks on Israeli communities.
Since then, more than 28,100 people have been killed in Gaza, the enclave’s Health Ministry has said.
The past few days have seen international calls, including from Israel’s western allies, to reconsider entering Rafah.
On Thursday, US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said that “such an operation right now with no planning and little thought … would be a disaster”.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said on Saturday that the UK is “deeply concerned” about the planned incursion.
In a post on social media, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said that “another bloodbath in Gaza cannot be allowed”.
Spain, Germany and the UAE have also voiced fears that a Rafah operation is a crisis in waiting.
Maha Hussaini, strategic director of the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, said Israel has already begun to increase its military operations in the city.
“During the past week, we have witnessed an intensification of Israeli air strikes on the city of Rafah. Many densely populated areas with refugees are extensively targeted, resulting in the daily killing of dozens of residents,” she told The National.
“Since the first day of this attack, we have witnessed frequent air strikes on densely populated residential areas. The only difference today is that the army has displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from various areas of the Gaza Strip to Rafah.
“Most of them say they will stay in Rafah even if they are killed because there is no safe place after Rafah.”
Before the war, Rafah had a population of about 280,000. Since the war began, about 1.5 million displaced Gazans have fled to the city, the UN has said.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has warned that there is nowhere left for people to go if Israel launches an assault on Rafah.
“People are currently not allowed to return to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip, and also, most residential units in the north have been destroyed,” UNRWA spokeswoman Tamara Al Rifai said yesterday.
An assault on Rafah would lead to “the same consequences we have witnessed before”, she said, “meaning the killing and displacement of more people”.
The mass displacement of Gaza’s population has led to Rafah becoming overcrowded, with thousands of people forced to live in makeshift tents amid a lack of housing.
Amna Ghaban, 46, fled to Rafah from the Beach refugee camp in northern Gaza, and lives with her family in an empty shop.
“I was displaced from my home and forced to flee on foot to the south, and now Rafah could be invaded,” Ms Ghaban told The National. “Where are we supposed to go?”
The UNRWA has warned that there is nowhere left for people to go if Israel launches an assault on Rafah