The Israeli army continues to bomb the south of the Gaza Strip on Friday February 9, and mainly the city of Rafah, where more than a million people are crowded, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced this week his intending to launch a ground offensive on the city.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, more than 1.3 million displaced Palestinians, five times the city’s original population, have crowded into the city in desperate conditions, according to the UN .
The Hamas health ministry announced on Friday a death toll of 27,947 people, including 107 deaths in the last 24 hours, and 67,459 people injured since the start of the war. This assessment could not be independently verified.
• Netanyahu asks the Israeli army to prepare an evacuation plan from Rafah, in preparation for a ground invasion
Two days after ordering the Israeli army to “prepare” an offensive on Rafah, the southernmost city of the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the latter on Friday to prepare a plan to evacuate the city’s population, in anticipation of this land invasion.
“It is impossible to achieve the war objective of eliminating Hamas and leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah. On the other hand, it is clear that a massive operation in Rafah requires the evacuation of the civilian population from the combat zones,” it is written in the press release released by his office. “This is why the Prime Minister asked the IDF (…) to present to the government a double plan, both for the evacuation of the population and for the dismantling of the battalions,” he continues.
Mr. Netanyahu said on Wednesday that victory over Hamas was “a matter of months.” “We ordered the Israeli armed forces to prepare an operation in Rafah as well as in two [refugee] camps, the last remaining strongholds of Hamas,” added the head of the Israeli government.
• US warns of ‘disaster’ and ‘excessive’ response
While Washington warned Thursday of a “disaster” in Rafah and assured that it would not support an operation “without serious planning” regarding civilians there, Joe Biden declared, in a rare criticism of Israel, before Mr. Netanyahu’s announcement of an order to evacuate Rafah: “I think, as you know, that the response (…) in the Gaza Strip was excessive.”
The American president was alarmed by an Israeli response that was now “out of proportion”. “I am pushing very hard, very very hard for humanitarian aid to get to Gaza,” Mr. Biden added. The head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, who concluded a regional tour on Thursday aimed at encouraging efforts to obtain a truce, for his part urged Israel on Thursday to “protect” civilians in its operations in Gaza, including Rafah.
The presidency of the Palestinian Authority – which has no longer had control of the Gaza Strip since 2007 – for its part “vehemently” condemned the Israeli military offensive planned for Rafah on Friday. It “is a real threat and a dangerous prelude” to the implementation of the Israeli political project aimed at “displacing Palestinians from their land,” Mahmoud Abbas’ office said in a statement.
She calls on the UN Security Council “to assume its responsibilities” in the face of this expansion of the “Israeli occupation” which “threatens security and peace in the region and the rest of the world” and considers that the States- United, as a close ally of Israel, bears a “special responsibility to prevent what could be a disastrous escalation.”
• Any offensive in Rafah will worsen the “tragedy”, warns the UN
Any major offensive by the Israeli army in Rafah will worsen the “endless tragedy” unfolding there, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, warned on Friday. The situation is “very worrying”, with “an intensification of operations and bombings” which “are getting closer”, explained Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, during a press briefing in Jerusalem.
“There is a feeling of panic” in Rafah because the Palestinians massed there “do not know at all where they could go” in the event of an offensive on the city, already regularly bombarded for several days, notes Mr. Lazzarini. “I don’t know for how much longer we will be able to work in such a high-risk environment,” he said, while UNRWA has been in turmoil since Israel claimed that some of its members had participated in the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7.
The Israeli plan for an offensive on Rafah is “alarming”, for his part declared Friday the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell, on he wrote, before adding: “This would have catastrophic consequences, worsening an already disastrous humanitarian situation and an unbearable civilian toll.”