ISRAEL’S ATTACK ON RAFAH IS IMMINENT
IDF now claims that Hamas has regrouped in the devastated areas of northern Gaza
Israel yesterday ordered new evacuations in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, forcing tens of thousands more people to move as it prepares to expand its military operation closer to the heavily populated central area — in defiance of growing pressure amid the war from close ally the US and others. As pro-Palestinian protests continued, Israel’s military also said it was moving into an area of devastated northern Gaza where it claims that the Hamas militant group has regrouped.
Israel has now evacuated the eastern third of Rafah, considered Gaza’s last refuge. The United Nations has warned that the planned full-scale Rafah invasion would further cripple humanitarian operations and cause a surge in civilian casualties.
Rafah borders Egypt near the main aid entry points, which already are affected. Israeli troops have captured the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing, forcing it to shut down food deliveries.
Egypt has refused to coordinate with Israel the delivery of aid though the Rafah crossing point because of “the unacceptable Israeli escalation” the state-owned Al Qahera News television channel reported yesterday, citing an unnamed official. The channel has close ties with Egyptian security agencies.
Israeli forces operating in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip are preventing Hamas from re-establishing its military capabilities there, Israel’s military spokesperson claimed yesterday.
“We identified in the past weeks attempts by Hamas to rehabilitate its military capabilities in Jabalia. We are operating there to eliminate those attempts,” said Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari during a briefing to reporters.
Hagari also said that Israeli forces operating in Gaza City’s Zeitoun district killed about 30 Palestinian militants.
Late last week US president Joe Biden has said he wouldn’t provide offensive weapons to Israel to use in an attack on Rafah.
Tensions have been heightened further in recent weeks by Netanyahu’s pledge to expand the Israeli military’s offensive in the crowded southern city, despite Biden’s adamant opposition. Biden is in the closing months of a tough re-election campaign against Donald Trump. He faces demands from many Democrats that he cut the flow of offensive weapons to Israel and denunciation from Republicans who accuse him of wavering on support for Israel at its time of need.
The Democratic administration took one of the first steps toward putting conditions on its military aid to Israel in recent days, when it paused a shipn- ment of 3,500 bombs out of concern over Israel’s threatened offensive on Rafah.
More than 1.4 million Palestinians — half of Gaza’s population — have been sheltering in Rafah, most after fleeing Israel’s offensives elsewhere. The evacuations are forcing some people to return north where areas are devastated from previous Israeli attacks.
Aid agencies estimate that 110,000 had left before yesterday’s order, which adds a further 40,000.
“Do we wait until we all die on top of each other? So we’ve decided to leave. It’s better,” said Rafah resident Hanan al-Satari as people rushed to load cars with mattresses, water tanks and whatever other belongings they have left.
“The Israeli army does not have a safe area in Gaza. They target everything,” said Abu Yusuf al-Deiri, earlier displaced from Gaza City.
Many Palestinians have now been displaced multiple times. There are few places left to go. Some fleeing fighting earlier in the week erected tent camps in the city of Khan Younis — half destroyed in an earlier Israeli offensive — and the central city of Deir al-Balah, straining the already damaged infrastructure.
Some Palestinians are being sent to what Israel has called “humanitarian safe zones” along the Muwasi coastal strip, which is already packed with about 450,000 people in squalid conditions. The garbage-strewn camp lacks basic facilities.
Georgios Petropoulos, an official with the UN humanitarian agency in Rafah, said aid workers had no supplies to help people set up in new locations. “We simply have no tents, we have no blankets, no bedding — none of the items that you would expect a population on the move to be able to get from the humanitarian system,” he said.
The World Food Program had warned it would run out of food for distribution in southern Gaza by yesterday — a further challenge. Parts of Gaza face what the WFP chief has called “full-blown famine”. Aid groups have said fuel will be depleted soon, forcing hospitals to shut down critical operations and halting trucks delivering aid.
Heavy fighting was also underway in northern Gaza. An Israeli army spokesman told Palestinians in Jabalia and Beit Lahiya and surrounding areas to leave their homes and head to shelters in the west of Gaza City, warning people they were in “a dangerous combat zone” and that Israel would strike with “great force”.
Do we have to wait we all die on top of each other?
The UN agency supporting people in Gaza, known as UNRWA, said about 300,000 people have been affected by evacuation orders in Rafah and Jabalia, but the numbers could likely be more.
Northern Gaza was the first target of Israel’s ground offensive, which was launched after Hamas and other militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking another 250 hostage. They still hold some 100 captives and the remains of more than 30.
Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives have killed more than 34,800 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties, accusing it of embedding in densely populated residential areas.
Israel says it cannot win the war without rooting out thousands of Hamas fighters it believes are in Rafah.
On Friday last, Israeli tanks captured the main road dividing Rafah’s eastern and western sections, effectively encircling the eastern side in an assault that caused Washington to pause deliveries.
The White House said it was watching the Israeli operations “with concern,” but added that they appeared to be localised around the shuttered Rafah crossing and did not reflect a largescale invasion of the city.
Civil authorities in Gaza yesterday gave more details of the mass graves that the health ministry announced earlier in the week at Shifa hospital, the largest hospital in northern Gaza and the target of an earlier Israeli offensive.
Authorities said most of the 80 bodies had been patients who died from lack of care. The Israeli army said “any attempt to blame Israel for burying civilians in mass graves is categorically false.”
At least 19 people, including eight women and eight children, were killed overnight in central Gaza in Israeli airstrikes, said an AP journalist who counted the dead bodies.
Another round of ceasefire talks in Cairo ended last week without a breakthrough.