KUALA LUMPUR – Hamas warned Israel yesterday that a ground offensive into Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah, crowded with displaced Palestinians, would imperil the release of hostages in the besieged territory.
International media reported that foreign governments, including Israel’s key ally the United States, and aid groups have voiced deep concern over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to extend operations.
Rafah, on the border with Egypt, has remained the last refuge for Palestinians fleeing Israel’s relentless bombardment elsewhere in the Gaza Strip in its four-month war against Hamas, triggered by the group’s October 7 attack.
“Any attack by the occupation army on the city of Rafah would torpedo the exchange negotiations,” a Hamas leader told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The Israeli prime minister has told troops to prepare to go into the city which now hosts more than half of Gaza’s total population, spurring concern about the impact on displaced civilians.
Netanyahu told US broadcaster ABC News that those who urged Israel not to go into Rafah were effectively giving Hamas a licence to remain.
In an interview aired yesterday, Netanyahu insisted the Rafah operation would go ahead “while providing safe passage for the civilian population so they can leave”.
Some 1.4 million people have crowded into Rafah, with many living in tents amid increasingly scarce food, water and medical supplies.
Mediators have held new talks in Cairo for a pause in the fighting and the release of at least some of the 132 hostages Israel says are still in Gaza, including 29 thought to be dead.
Hamas seized some 250 hostages on October 7, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, and dozens were released during a one-week truce in November.
Hamas’s military wing yesterday said two hostages had been killed and eight others seriously wounded in Israeli bombardment in recent days.
Israeli strikes have long hit targets in Rafah, and yesterday’s combat seemed intense several kilometres to the north in Khan Yunis city, where AFP correspondents heard regular explosions and saw plumes of black smoke.
Israel’s military said troops were conducting “targeted raids” in the west of Khan Yunis, an area where Hamas’s armed wing reported violent clashes.
The Hamas-run territory’s health ministry yesterday reported 112 deaths over the previous 24 hours, and Hamas authorities added there had been dozens of air strikes, including on Rafah. Massacre
The October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people including civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Vowing to eliminate Hamas, Israel has responded with a relentless offensive in Gaza that the territory’s health ministry says has killed at least 28,176 people, mostly women and children.
On ABC, Netanyahu claimed Israeli forces have “killed and wounded…about 12,000 fighters” of Hamas.
The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) were some of the latest to raise the alarm over the plan for Rafah, Gaza’s last major population centre that Israeli troops have yet to enter.
“The OIC strongly warned that the continuation and expansion of the Israeli military aggression is part of rejected attempts to forcibly expel the Palestinian people from their land,” the 57-nation Jeddah-based bloc said on social media.
It stressed “that such acts fall under genocide and would lead to a humanitarian catastrophe and collective massacre”.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also rejected the “forced” displacement of people from Rafah, evoking the trauma of Palestinians’ mass exodus and forced displacement around the time of Israel’s creation in 1948.
Denouncing a “genocide” in Gaza, thousands rallied in Morocco’s capital Rabat and called on their government to undo a 2020 normalisation pact with Israel.
A French foreign ministry spokesman said “a large-scale Israeli offensive in Rafah would create a catastrophic humanitarian situation” and could lead to “disaster”.
Earlier in the Gaza war Israel’s military called on residents to evacuate areas “for their safety”. – February 12, 2024