The Israeli army’s ground attack on Rafah is a matter of time. The first minister, Benjamin NetanyahuLast week he ordered his people to develop a “dual plan” that would allow the evacuation of civilians while expanding the military operation to the city at the southern end of the Gaza Strip to “destroy the (Hamas) battalions.” .
In the Palestinian enclave, more than 28,000 people have died in four months of war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry’s updated count, and more than 1.3 million people are crowded into Rafah, the third and final bastion in Hamas’s hands. , mostly internally displaced people who survive in makeshift tents and have almost no access to drinking water or food. Before the war, the population of Rafah was no more than 275,000 people.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turkwarned this Monday that an incursion into Rafah “would be frightening, considering that an extremely high number of civilians, again mainly children and women, could be killed and wounded.”
According to Türk, the operation would also seriously jeopardize the rest of the humanitarian aid arriving through the border crossing with Egypt. In recent hours, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Arab countries and other international actors also warned of the “catastrophic” consequences that the operation could have.
But Netanyahu is not giving in. The Prime Minister interviewed said this on Sunday in interviews with American broadcasters ABC News And Fox News that Israeli authorities are developing “a detailed plan” to relocate civilians to areas north of Rafah, which their army, he said, made possible. “Let’s do it. “We will destroy the remaining Hamas terrorist battalions in Rafah,” Netanyahu said. “We will do this while allowing safe passage for civilians.”
The roadmap is not yet created. According to the newspaper, there are no signs that the Israeli brigades based in the Gaza Strip are concentrated near Rafah Haaretz. Furthermore, unlike Israel’s previous incursions into Gaza City and Khan Younis, no instructions were given to the local population to evacuate the potential war zone. No leaflets were dropped from the sky, no notifications from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman, no mass-distributed text messages. Nothing.
However, many are wondering where they could escape to. There is no possibility of escape. The borders are firmly closed. The proposal put forward by Israel includes the construction of extensive tent cities in Gaza, to be financed by the United States and its Arab partners in the Gulf, the statement said Wall Street Journal. However, some observers believe that Israel intends to expel the population to the Sinai Peninsula, a possibility that Egypt flatly rejects.
While Netanyahu and other War Cabinet voices like it Benny Gantz To ensure that the ground attack on Rafah will take place this year, Israel has already carried out several airstrikes on Gaza’s southernmost city. The operation, which managed to free two hostages held in Rafah, Fernando Simon Marman and Louis Har, also gave a Netanyahu some oxygen in the bad hours.
