Israel is pressing ahead with plans to extend its military campaign to Rafah, at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip, despite Washington expressing reservations over the fate of the more than one million refugees who have fled to the city on the Egyptian border.
Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu instructed the Israel Defense Forces on Friday to present plans to the country’s war cabinet for the evacuation of the civilian population from Rafah and the elimination of the Hamas militants in the area.
“It’s impossible to achieve the war goals which include dismantling Hamas while leaving four of its battalions in Rafah. However, it’s clear that intense operations in Rafah must come with the evacuation of the population from combat zones,” a statement from the prime minister’s office said.
The office of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said Israel’s plan for a military escalation in Rafah aims to drive Palestinians from their land and “crosses all red lines”. Mr Abbas urged the United Nations to act.
Egypt fears that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees will flee across the border into the Egyptian Sinai if Israel attacks Rafah.
Egyptian security sources reported on Friday that Cairo has sent about 40 tanks and armoured personnel carriers to northeastern Sinai within the past two weeks as part of a series of measures to bolster security on its border with Gaza.
The latest developments came after US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby warned that any military activity in Rafah would be “disastrous” because of the number of civilians there, and the United States would not support such a decision.
Talks on a possible ceasefire in the four-month-old Israeli-Hamas war, between a Hamas delegation and Egyptian and Qatari mediators, continued in Cairo on Friday but there were no indications of progress. Hamas wants to link the release of hostages held since its October 7th attack on Israel to the end of the war but Israel insists on continuing the fighting until “total victory” and the end of the Hamas presence in the coastal enclave.
Almost 28,000 residents have been killed in Gaza according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Israel says 1,200 civilians and soldiers were killed and more than 250 kidnapped in the Hamas surprise attack on October 7th. More than 100 hostages were freed during a brief truce in November.
Almost one in 10 of Gazan children under five are now acutely malnourished, according to initial United Nations data from arm measurements that show physical wasting.
Food supplies to Gaza have dropped significantly from their pre-war level, and aid workers have reported visible signs of starvation, especially in areas of northern and central Gaza worst hit by Israel’s war on Hamas.
Food trucks have in recent weeks regularly been mobbed by hungry crowds before they could reach the hospitals they were heading for, according to aid workers.
Relatives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza have demanded an emergency meeting with the war cabinet following what they termed “a string of events and comments raising difficult questions relating to the cabinet’s commitment to freeing the hostages”.
On Israel’s northern border Hizbullah fired some 40 rockets into the Galilee panhandle on Friday night. Fighting has significantly escalated over the last few days with Iranian-backed Hizbullah militants firing rockets at military bases and civilian communities over the border and Israeli jets and artillery and tanks pounding militant targets deep into southern Lebanon.
