Israel steps up its assault on Rafah as peace talks look doomed
Netanyahu vows that his country will fight on with its ‘fingernails’
Israeli forces bombarded areas of Rafah yesterday, Palestinian residents said, as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed US president Joe Biden’s threat to withhold weapons from Israel if it assaults the southern Gaza city.
A senior Israeli official said last night that the latest round of indirect negotiations in Cairo to halt hostilities in Gaza had ended and Israel would proceed with its operation in Rafah and other parts of the Gaza Strip as planned.
Israel has submitted to mediators its reservations about a Hamas proposal for a hostage release deal, the official said.
“If we must, we shall fight with our fingernails,” Mr Netanyahu said in a video statement. “But we have much more than our fingernails.”
In Gaza, Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad said their fighters fired anti-tank rockets and mortars at Israeli tanks massed on the eastern outskirts of the city.
Residents and medics in Rafah, the biggest urban area in Gaza not yet overrun by Israeli ground forces, said an Israeli attack near a mosque killed at least three people and wounded others in the eastern Brazil neighbourhood.
Video footage from the scene showed the minaret lying in the rubble and two bodies wrapped in blankets.
An Israeli air strike on two houses in the Sabra neighbourhood of Rafah killed at least 12 people including women and children.
Among the dead was a senior commander of the militant Al-Mujahedeen Brigades, and his family, and the family of another group leader, medics, relatives and the group said.
Israel says Hamas militants are hiding in Rafah, where the population has been swelled by hundreds of thousands of Gazans seeking refuge from the bombardments that have reduced most of the coastal enclave to ruins, and it needs to eliminate them for its own security.
One of the displaced, Mohammad Abder-Rahman, said he feared the Israeli bombardments presaged an invasion of the city. “It reminds me of what happened before Israeli tanks stormed our residential areas in Gaza City, heavy bombardment usually allows tanks to roll towards places they intend to invade,” he said.
In the United States, the White House repeated its hope that Israel would not launch a full operation in Rafah, saying it did not believe that would advance Israel’s aim of defeating Hamas.
“Smashing into Rafah, in President Biden’s view, will not advance that objective,” spokesman John Kirby said.
Mr Kirby said Hamas had been pressured significantly by Israel and there were better options to hunt down what remains of the group’s leadership than an operation with significant risk to civilians. Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 80,000, most of them civilians, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said.
It launched its offensive in response to a cross-border attack by Hamas militants on Israel on October 7 in which they killed about 1,200 people and abducted 252. Around 128 hostages remain in Gaza and 36 have been declared dead, according to the latest Israeli figures.
Mr Biden, who says Israel has not produced a convincing plan to safeguard civilians in Rafah, issued his starkest warning yet against a full ground invasion. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah...I’m not supplying the weapons,” Mr Biden told CNN in an interview on Wednesday.
The Israeli military has the munitions it requires for operations in Rafah and other planned operations, chief armed forces spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.
In Cairo, delegations from Hamas, Israel, the US, Egypt and Qatar had been meeting since Tuesday. The talks in Egypt’s capital made some headway but no deal was reached, according to two Egyptian security sources.
Izzat El-Risheq, a member of Hamas’ political office in Qatar, said the Hamas delegation had left Cairo, having reaffirmed its approval of the mediators’ ceasefire proposal. The plan entails the release of Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza and a number of Palestinians jailed by Israel. Hamas blamed Israel for the lack of agreement so far. Israel has said it is open to a truce, but has rejected demands for an end to the war.
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Washington continued to engage with Israel on amendments to a ceasefire proposal, adding that work to finalise the text of an agreement was “incredibly difficult”.
On Tuesday, Israeli tanks seized the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, cutting off a vital aid route and forcing 80,000 people to flee the city this week, according to the United Nations.
Israel kept up tank and aerial strikes across Gaza and tanks advanced in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City in the north, forcing hundreds of families to flee, residents said. The Israeli military said it was securing Zeitoun, starting with a series of intelligence-based aerial strikes on approximately 25 militant targets.
Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza was heaving with people who had fled Rafah in recent days. Palestinian medics said two people, including a woman, were killed when a drone fired a missile at a group of people there.