Israel launched an operation on Monday aimed at evacuating tens of thousands of Palestinian families from the east of the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. The army is preparing a major offensive in its war against Hamas.
Despite international condemnations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to launch this offensive, which he believes is essential to destroy the last battalions of the Islamist movement in the Palestinian territory.
“Residents are evacuating in terror and panic,” Ossama al-Kahlout, a Palestinian Red Crescent official in eastern Rafah, told AFP, adding that the designated areas were home to around 250,000 people.
The army confirmed that it had “begun an operation of limited scale to temporarily evacuate people residing in eastern Rafah”, estimating the number of people concerned at “around 100,000”.
Residents told AFP they learned the news when they woke up, after a night of anxiety punctuated by around ten Israeli strikes. Some were packing their belongings, in their tents flooded by heavy rain, or piling them into trailers.
Talks for a truce
After nighttime bombings which left 16 people dead in two families, according to rescuers, Civil Defense announced Monday that the army was intensifying its strikes on two of the neighborhoods affected by the evacuations.
Rafah, on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, has been transformed into a gigantic refugee camp housing, according to the UN, 1.2 million Palestinians, or half of the territory’s population, most of them displaced people.
Benjamin Netanyahu promised to launch this offensive regardless of the outcome of indirect negotiations led by Qatar, the United States and Egypt, aimed at imposing a truce associated with the release of hostages held in Gaza in exchange for prisoners Palestinians.
A round of talks ended Sunday in Cairo without progress. Hamas continues to demand a definitive ceasefire while Israel promises to destroy the Islamist movement in power in Gaza since 2007, author of an unprecedented attack on its soil on October 7, which sparked the war.
This evacuation order “portends the worst: more war and famine. This is unacceptable. Israel must renounce a ground offensive” in Rafah, said Monday the head of diplomacy of the European Union, Josep Borrell. .
“Where to go?”
Leaflets dropped Monday morning on the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah warn that “the Israeli army is preparing to act forcefully against terrorist organizations.” “For your safety, the Israeli army asks you to immediately evacuate to the expanded humanitarian zone of al-Mawasi”, about ten kilometers from Rafah, it is indicated.
According to the army, “field hospitals, tents and an increasing volume of food, water, medicine and others” are set up in this area.
But residents and humanitarian organizations describe areas already overpopulated or destroyed after seven months of war. “My family and I, 13 people, don’t know where to go,” confides Abdul Rahman Abu Jazar, a 36-year-old man. This area lacks “place to pitch tents or schools to shelter us”, “there is no hospital”, he assures.
An official from the NGO Action Against Hunger, Jean-Raphaël Poitou, described a place where “everything is damaged”. “The infrastructure, in all the areas that would be reopened, everything has been flattened. People will have to go on debris or in small areas,” in the desert or on the beach, he said.
“Balled negotiations”
The army claimed that this evacuation “was part of plans to dismantle Hamas”, considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union.
This operation comes after the death on Sunday of four soldiers killed by rockets fired from eastern Rafah around Kerem Shalom, the main entry point for humanitarian aid from Israel to Gaza.
The armed wing of Hamas claimed responsibility for the shots, which led Israel to close the crossing, while international aid trickles into the besieged territory, where the UN fears widespread famine. This bombing caused “negotiations to bog down” with a view to a truce, said Egyptian media Al-Qahera News, close to intelligence, on Monday.
“Every time there is a rupture, the violence increases,” said Joost Hiltermann, analyst for the International Crisis Group. “This means Netanyahu is saying: ‘The negotiations are not leading to the agreement I want, so I’m going to start invading Rafah,'” the analyst told AFP.
Hamas for its part “knows that Israel will not change its position (…) so they fire rockets to show that the price to pay will be high”, he added. In parallel with the negotiations, “Israeli troops are massing at the border to invade Rafah and Hamas is firing rockets in their direction,” notes Mr. Hiltermann.