ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered troops to “prepare to operate” in Rafah, the southern border city where thousands and thousands of displaced Palestinians have fled.
Israel has intensified air raids and witnesses reported new strikes on Rafah early this morning as Palestinians fear a ground invasion in the border city.
Netanyahu told military officials to submit to the government Cabinet a “combined plan for evacuating the population and destroying the battalions” in Rafah.
Israel initially focused its attacks on Gaza in northern areas, telling civilians to evacuate towards the south, but has turned to bombing southern cities like Khan Younis and Rafah, killing refugees who had fled from the north.
At least 110 people were killed in overnight attacks, including 25 in strikes in Rafah, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
The previous day, three children were killed in a strike in Rafah, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.
The US State Department has said it does not support a ground operation in Rafah and that such an operation risks “disaster”.
“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,” US president Joe Biden said – a sign of rising tensions between Israel and its key ally.
“There are a lot of innocent people who are starving… in trouble and dying, and it’s got to stop.”
Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have arrived in Rafah in recent months. Refugees are sleeping in tents and face long queues for scarce water supplies.
President Michael D. Higgins issued a statement last week warning that if Israel continued to strike areas densely populated with refugees, it would “leave any respect for humanitarian law in tatters”.
President Higgins said that “what is at stake now, given the high proportion of loss of life of non-combatants, and particularly of women and children, is the potential emptying out of the entire space and discourse of human rights and international humanitarian law”.
Doctors Without Borders has said a ground invasion in Rafah would be “catastrophic and must not proceed”.
“There is no place that is safe in Gaza and no way for people to leave,” the organisation said.
Israeli forces raided Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis yesterday after a weeks-long siege that involved “intense artillery shelling and heavy gunfire”.
DWB said said Israeli forces arrested eight of its team members at the hospital, including “four doctors, as well as four wounded individuals and five patients’ companions”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said he still sees “space for agreement to be reached” on a deal to call of fighting and release hostages, even after Netanyahu rejected what he labelled Hamas’s “bizarre demands”.
Hamas negotiators left Cairo yesterday after what a Hamas source described as “positive and good discussions” with Egyptian and Qatari mediators.
Additional reporting by AFP
