The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Netanyahu set to unleash troops on Gaza’s last safe city
Nataliya Vasilyeva middle east coRResPondent
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU ordered Israel’s army to prepare to evacuate civilians from Rafah yesterday ahead of a “massive operation”.
The move comes despite US warnings that it would not support a ground invasion of the last relatively safe city in Gaza.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said the military had been asked to draft a “combined plan” to move civilians out of the southern border city, home to 1.3 million people, in order to destroy what is thought to be the final bolthole for Hamas.
“It is impossible to achieve the war objective of dismantling Hamas while letting four Hamas battalions be in Rafah,” said Mr Netanyahu. “On the other hand, it is clear that a massive operation in Rafah requires an evacuation of the civilian population from the combat area.”
Four months into Israel’s war against Hamas, much of Gaza has been obliterated by bombings and ground operations, including mass demolitions along the border with Israel.
More than half of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.2million has fled and is crammed into a corner of the south-east of the territory, in dire conditions.
Mr Netanyahu’s statement comes despite the clearest criticism yet from Washington, Israel’s key ally, that such a move would not be acceptable.
“I’m of the view, as you know, that the conduct of the response in Gaza, in the Gaza Strip, has been over the top,” Joe Biden, the US president, said on Thursday. “There are a lot of innocent people who are starving ... in trouble and dying, and it’s got to stop.”
A state department spokesman added that an Israeli ground operation in Rafah was “not something we’d support” and that without proper planning it would be “a disaster”.
Aid agencies including the United Nations have also warned Israel against expanding operations to Rafah, currently the only area in Gaza where the most basic services are available to Palestinians.
“We need Gaza’s last remaining hospitals, shelters, markets and water systems to stay functional,” said Catherine Russell, the director of Unicef, the UN children’s agency. “Without them, hunger and disease will skyrocket, taking more child lives.”
The Israeli Defense Forces previously insisted that gaining control of Gaza City in the north and later Khan Younis in the south was crucial to dismantling Hamas as an organised force.
The military establishment, however, now believes that the Hamas leadership is hiding in tunnels underneath Rafah and that Israel cannot overpower the terrorist group unless it engages with its remaining forces in the south.
The IDF previously gave Gazans short-notice evacuation orders, but they were almost impossible to follow amid carpet-bombings across the enclave.
Israeli leader orders Rafah evacuation to give forces free rein on what is said to be Hamas’s last hideaway