Netanyahu orders evacuation plan for Gaza city
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday said he has ordered the military to prepare a plan to evacuate civilians from Rafah ahead of an expected Israeli invasion of the densely populated southern Gaza city.
The announcement came after heavy international criticism, including from the U.S., of Israeli intentions to move ground forces into the city. Rafah borders Egypt and is now home to hundreds of thousands of people living in sprawling tent camps after fleeing fighting elsewhere in Gaza.
Israel says that after more than four months of war Rafah is the last remaining Hamas stronghold in Gaza.
“It is impossible to achieve the goal of the war of eliminating Hamas by leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah,” Netanyahu’s office said. “On the contrary, it is clear that intense activity in Rafah requires that civilians evacuate the areas of combat.”
It said he had ordered the military and security officials to come up with a “combined plan” that includes both a mass evacuation of civilians and the destruction of Hamas’ forces in the town.
Israel declared war after several thousand Hamas militants burst across the border into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage. An Israeli air and ground offensive has killed over 27,000 Palestinians, most of them women and minors, according to local health officials. Roughly 80% of Gaza’s population has been displaced, and the territory has plunged into a humanitarian crisis with shortages of food and medical services.
Netanyahu has largely rebuffed international criticism of the civilian death toll, saying that Hamas is responsible for endangering civilians by operating and hiding in residential areas. But that criticism has grown in recent days as Netanyahu and other leaders vow to move into Rafah.
U.S. President Joe Biden said that Israel’s conduct in the war is “over the top,” the harshest U.S. criticism yet of its close ally. The State Department said an invasion of Rafah in the current circumstances “would be a disaster.”
The operation will be a challenge on many levels. It remains unclear where civilians can go. The Israeli offensive has caused widespread destruction, especially in northern Gaza, and hundreds of thousands of people do not have homes to return to.
In addition, Egypt has warned that any movement of Palestinians across the border into Egypt would threaten the four-decade-old peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. The border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which is mostly closed, serves as the main entry point for humanitarian aid.
Israel already has begun to strike Rafah from the air. Airstrikes overnight and into Friday hit two residential buildings in Rafah, while two other sites were bombed in central Gaza, including one that damaged a kindergarten-turned-shelter for displaced Palestinians. Twenty-two people were killed, according to AP journalists who saw the bodies arriving at hospitals.
GROWING FRICTION Comments from top U.S. officials about Rafah have signaled growing friction with Netanyahu after a visit to the region by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Blinken, who has been working with Egypt and Qatar on trying to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, left the region Thursday without an agreement. But he said he believed it was still possible to strike a deal that would include an extended pause in fighting in exchange for the release of many of the more than 100 hostages held by Hamas.
Netanyahu appeared to snub Blinken, saying he will settle for nothing short of “total victory.” The Israeli leader has said the war seeks to destroy Hamas’ military and governing capabilities and return all hostages home. With Blinken still in town,
Netanyahu said achieving those goals would require an operation in Rafah. Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, said Thursday that going ahead with such an offensive “with no planning and little thought in an area where there is sheltering of a million people would be a disaster.”
John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesman, said an Israel ground offensive in Rafah is “not something we would support.”
Aid agency officials have also sounded warnings over the prospect of a Rafah offensive. “We need Gaza’s last remaining hospitals, shelters, markets and water systems to stay functional,” said Catherine Russell, head of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF. “Without them, hunger and disease will skyrocket, taking more child lives.”
With the war now in its fifth month, Israeli ground forces are still focusing on the city of Khan Younis, just north of Rafah, but Netanyahu has repeatedly said Rafah will be next, creating panic among hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
AIRSTRIKES OVERNIGHT Shortly after midnight Friday, a residential building was struck near Rafah’s Kuwaiti Hospital, killing five people from the al-Sayed family, including three children and a woman. A second Rafah strike killed three more people.
Another overnight strike, in the central town of Deir al-Balah, claimed nine lives. Also in central Gaza, a strike hit near a kindergarten-turned-shelter, damaging the building. It killed five and wounded several more people. Witnesses said shelter residents were asleep at the time.
A woman, carrying a small girl in her arms, shouted as she arrived at the local Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital: “What can we do? This is the work of the coward Zionist enemy that chooses innocent civilians. This girl is firing rockets at the Jews? May God help us.”
Some of the wounded children treated while lying on the floor. were
WORKING FOR A CEASE-FIRE Israel’s 4-month-old air and ground offensive – among the most destructive in recent history – has killed 27,947 Palestinians and wounded more than 67,000, local health officials said Friday. The war has driven most people from their homes and pushed a quarter of the population toward starvation, according to the UN.
Biden has said said he continues to work “tirelessly” to press Israel and Hamas to agree on an extended pause in fighting.
Netanyahu has rejected Hamas’ demands for a hostage deal, which includes an end to the war and the release of hundreds of veteran Palestinian prisoners serving long sentences in Israel for deadly attacks carried out as part of the long-running conflict. Netanyahu dismissed Hamas’ demands as delusional, even as Blinken said he believes continued negotiations, through mediators Egypt and Qatar, are possible.
Israel’s war goals appear increasingly elusive, as Hamas reemerges in parts of northern Gaza, which was the first target of the offensive and has seen widespread destruction. Israel has only rescued one hostage, while Hamas says several have been killed in airstrikes or failed rescue missions.
While the New Democrats launched their consultation on changes to the Land Act without letting the public in on the secret, they did alert some corporations, industry associations and other interest groups.
The government released a list of those preferred “stakeholders” on Thursday.
Nathan Cullen, the presiding minister of water, land and resource stewardship, had promised to make it available last week.
The names of those in the know included some of the biggest corporations in the province: Telus, Rogers, Bell, Fortis and B.C. Hydro.
The invitations went to many of the industry associations: B.C. Business Council, Council of Forest Industries, Petroleum Producers, Clean Energy B.C., Creative B.C., B.C. Salmon Farmers, Shellfish Growers, B.C. Cattlemen, B.C. Stone, Sand and Gravel, Adventure Tourism Coalition, Guide Outfitters, Canada West Ski Areas, and Boating B.C.
The ministry also advised the Union of B.C. Municipalities and the Land Surveyors.
Those players should be consulted about the NDP proposal to amend the Land Act to enable co-management of Crown lands with Indigenous nations on the basis of consent.
However, the provincial government provoked suspicions when it did not announce its intentions by news release or any other broadly public process.
Cullen said last week that he regrets the lapse.
The failure not only undermined the process, it risked provoking a backlash toward Indigenous people.
This week the minister has been promoting the consultations, albeit mostly with the same groups that were invited to join in the first place.
“Met with 90 people representing outdoor recreation businesses in B.C.,” Cullen announced Tuesday on the social media platform X.
“Thanks for the excellent conversations into how we work together to create more opportunities for people and communities. This follows important meetings with ranchers, oil and gas and many others.”
“In addition to the original outreach, we have broadened and deepened our engagement on the proposed Land Act amendments,” it said by email.
Cullen and ministry executives “have been conducting in-depth conversations” with the forest industry, petroleum producers, tourism operators, cattlemen and mineral explorers.
“More than 430 people have attended these sessions.
“More organizations have been invited, and those meetings will be happening soon.”
For members of the public who did not get an invitation, the main option for feedback remains the Engage B.C. website. The government accepts written submissions only.
Cullen also flagged a supportive statement from Geoff Plant, who served as attorney general under B.C. Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell.
Plant began the posting on his Plant Rant blog with “putting aside the question whether the government has done a good job of introducing the topic,” which strikes me as missing the point regarding much of the backlash.
He went on to argue that the New Democrats are on the right track in amending the Land Act to enable joint management agreements with First Nations.
“A welcome initiative,” wrote Plant. He says it is necessitated by the Canadian Constitution, a succession of court decisions and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, for which the legislature unanimously enacted supporting legislation in 2019.
Also pushing back against the critics this week was Doug White, special legal counsel to Premier David Eby on Indigenous reconciliation.
White linked his X account to a commentary in the Victoria Times Colonist that in his view, provided “real information, context to counteract the misand disinformation on the land act amendments.”
The author was lawyer Roshan Danesh, special adviser on reconciliation to Jody Wilson-Raybould when she was federal justice minister.
Danesh characterized the controversy over the proposed changes to the Land Act as “much ado about nothing” and “small steps on a long path.”
The amendments would merely allow the government to enter into joint management agreements, he argued. The agreements will still have to be negotiated, vetted, aired publicly, and approved.
Danesh didn’t help his case by saying the NDP government was “doing public engagement on amendments to the Land Act,” without acknowledging that the government had – by its own belated admission – neglected to engage the public.
Cullen, having acknowledged his failings, now says he’s keen to address public concerns.
“Hey, I’ve got no trouble,” he told Mike Smyth on CKNW this week.