:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/mentormedier/YS4KD26TQ5A77MVFVXMLM2SAU4.jpg "This is what you need to know about the city of Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip – Dagsavisen")
– There are no safe places in Gaza, and repeated forced displacement has pushed people to Rafah, where they are trapped in a tiny area with no options, warns Doctors Without Borders on X/Twitter.
On the night of Monday, there were again heavy attacks against Rafah, which is located in the very south of the Gaza Strip. According to Palestinian health authorities, at least 67 people were killed, and the attacks hit 14 homes and three mosques in different parts of Rafah.
It comes just days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was necessary to enter Rafah to crush Hamas. Netanyahu has ordered the military to prepare an evacuation of the overpopulated city, which lies on the border with Egypt. The US, as Israel’s closest ally, is among several who have warned of disaster if Israel moves into Rafah. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled south in recent months.
When Netanyahu was asked where Israel planned to relocate the Palestinians, he replied that they were “working out a detailed plan”. He said there is enough space in areas north of Rafah that soldiers have “cleared”. However, large parts of the areas lie in ruins, writes NTB. Neighboring Egypt has made it clear that it will not accept Israel expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the border.
Nowhere, is the answer from Middle East expert Hilde Henriksen Waage to questions about where the Palestinians can be evacuated to, if they are not going to go north on the Gaza Strip and are not allowed to go into Egypt.
– They can choose to drown in the Mediterranean. That way out is not mentioned. It is absolutely impossible, says Waage, who is a professor of history at the University of Oslo (UiO) and senior researcher at the Institute for Peace Research (Prio).
What has happened, and what is the real meaning of Rafah?
What and where is Rafah?
The Gaza Strip itself is a narrow strip of land with an area of 360 square kilometers. It has around 2.4 million inhabitants, of which around 1.7 million are registered as refugees by the UN, writes NTB.
Rafah, which with its 151 square kilometers makes up only 17 percent of Gaza’s land area, was home to 280,000 people before the war. Rafah city is the “capital” of Rafah governorate.
Rafah’s history can be traced back millennia, and the city has been the subject of conflict a number of times. Simplified, there are some important years to have with you:
- In 1948, the state of Israel was established and around 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes during the first Arab-Israeli war. In the same year, Egypt took control of Gaza.
- Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, where Rafah is located, was invaded by Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967.
- After the Camp David Agreement between Israel and Egypt in 1978, Sinai was given back to Egypt. The last Israeli soldiers withdrew from the peninsula in 1982, summarizes NPR.
- Israel opened the Rafah border crossing after the peace agreement, and until 2005 the country had control over who was allowed to travel from Gaza into Egypt.
- In 2005, Egypt, the EU and the Palestinian Authority (PA) took over control. In 2006, Hamas won the elections in the Palestinian territories, but the victory is not recognized by the outside world.
- The EU withdrew from border controls in 2007, and Egypt and Israel agreed to close the border crossing after Hamas took control. To circumvent the economic blockade, smugglers dug hundreds of tunnels under Rafah to transport goods into Gaza.
Israeli blockade and trade
Hilde Henriksen Waage has been to Rafah herself. Like the rest of the Gaza Strip, she describes it as a densely populated city.
– Previously, this was a place where many people made a living from trade and smuggling through the tunnels, which were completely open until 2014. When I was there in 2011, I thought that what I saw in the distance was a campsite, with tents upon tents . The tents were over each tunnel opening. This trade, the smuggling, took place completely openly, Waage tells Dagsavisen, and says that both cigarettes, cola cans, live chickens and everything else came out of the tunnel.
In the 2014 war between Israel and Gaza, Israel intervened to destroy the border tunnels, which had also been used by Hamas to attack Israelis.
Waage says it is obvious that Hamas and the Palestinians have built tunnels again, but more covertly.
– Rafah, like the rest of the Gaza Strip, has been characterized by enormous poverty. There is great humanitarian suffering, where UNRWA and the UN are keeping the population alive, says Waage, looking back at when she herself was there.
– The whole area was completely down and marked by the blockade that has taken a stranglehold on the entire population of the Gaza Strip.
UNRWA is the United Nations aid organization for Palestinian refugees.
A large network of tunnels has been built in Gaza, and Israel has said that the tunnels have been the main target of its attacks in recent months. So far, around 28,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the health authorities in the enclave.
Also read: Gaza Warnings: – About pure desperation (+)
What has happened now?
Refugee Palestinians have flocked to the Rafah area in recent months. Not everyone has been given a place in the overcrowded camps inside the city, and many have set up tents along the road. Already at the end of last year, it was reported that the water and sewage systems had broken down, and there were few functioning toilets. At the top are food shortages and diseases, and warnings of a crisis that is only getting worse by the day.
Now it is estimated that around two-thirds of Gaza’s population, 1.5 million people, are huddled together there. It is the most overpopulated area in Gaza, warns Norwegian People’s Aid. Tens of thousands of people are gathering at schools and health clinics run by UNWRA, but the organization is struggling after several countries froze aid. The background is accusations from Israel that 12 of UNRWA’s employees participated in the attack on 7 October.
Rafah has long been of great importance to today’s residents of Gaza. It is located along the approximately 12 kilometer long border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, and there is also an important border crossing.
Read also: – The national trauma above all national traumas for the Palestinians
What about the border crossing?
Before the war, the border crossing at Rafah was often referred to as a lifeline for the residents of Gaza. It is one of two main border crossings for residents, and the only one that has not been under direct Israeli control. Rafah is therefore located in the south of the Gaza Strip, while the other border crossing, Erez, is located in the north at the border with Israel. In addition, there is the Kerem Shalom border crossing, a hub for trade in southern Gaza.
The Rafah crossing is controlled by Egypt, but Israel monitors all activity in the south of Gaza from the Kerem Shalom military base, located at the crossing point between Gaza, Israel and Egypt, in addition to other monitoring points, explains news agency AFP. People, goods and supplies and emergency aid are transported across the Rafah crossing. But after Israel imposed a blockade of Gaza in 2007, the border has only occasionally been open to Palestinians.
The blockade was further tightened after the October attack, but has been partially open for limited evacuation of foreign citizens and some critically injured Palestinians.
– Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair, and we fear what is to come, said Jens Lærke, spokesman for the UN Office for Emergency Relief (OCHA), earlier in February.
– Every single week we think that this can’t get worse, but it is getting worse, he said.
Read also: This is what you need to know about South Africa’s genocide accusation against Israel
What now?
Hilde Henriksen Waage looks to history when explaining why the Gaza Strip became the world‘s most densely populated area, and emphasizes that the Palestinians have nowhere to go.
Not only does she refer to what happened in 1948 and 1967, but also to the Camp David negotiations in the late 70s. In that agreement, in addition to Israel returning the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, Israel demanded a long demilitarized zone outside the Gaza Strip. To this day, there is still such a zone through the Sinai desert, the so-called Philadelphia Corridor. It runs along almost the entire border between Egypt and Gaza. The demilitarization means that the Egyptian authorities do not immediately have control in this zone, says Waage.
– The border crossing to Egypt is just as closed as the border crossing to Israel. This is desert and demilitarized zone, with terrorist groups and criminal gangs outside. There is no place for humans. The UN says that Gaza is no place for people to live, certainly not outside either. There is no infrastructure, just a road that takes you to Cairo. Nothing else.
This is important to bear in mind when advocating that Palestinians can “only” flee into Egypt, says Waage.
– If there should now be cruel skirmishes and bloodbaths in Rafah, which many are afraid of, and this border crossing is blown up or run down, and Palestinians flow across the border, they will end up in no man’s land on the other side. Ruled by terrorist groups and criminal gangs.
On Monday afternoon, eyewitnesses and a security source stated that Egypt has strengthened the military presence along the border with Gaza, writes NTB. The background is Israel’s announced ground invasion in the border town of Rafah.
Read more about the Israel-Palestine conflict
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