Israel orders new Rafah evacuations
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israel ordered new evacuations in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah on Saturday, 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 United States and others.
As pro-Palestinian protests continued, Israel’s military also said it was moving into an area of devastated northern Gaza where it asserted 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.
Egypt has refused to coordinate with Israel the delivery of aid though the Rafah crossing point because of “the unacceptable Israeli escalation,” the stateowned Al Qahera News television channel reported Saturday, citing an unnamed official. The channel has close ties with Egyptian security agencies.
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 Saturday’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 mattresses, water tanks and other belongings onto vehicles.
“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 people have 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 infrastructure.
Georgios Petropoulos, an official with the U.N. 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.