After seven months of offensive against Hamas, Israel claims that Rafah is home to thousands of fighters from the radical Palestinian movement and that victory is impossible without taking the city.
“The army is encouraging residents of the eastern part of Rafah to move to the expanded humanitarian zones”, he said in a statement.
The UN has estimated that around 1.2 million people, most of them displaced by the fighting, are in Rafah, against which Israel has insisted for months that it intends to carry out a major military offensive. The Israeli army guaranteed that the operation to remove the inhabitants was temporary and “limited in scope”. However, it did not confirm whether it was the start of a wider invasion of the city. In October, Israel also did not formally announce the launch of the ground invasion that continues to this day.
The initiative comes a day after Hamas militants carried out an attack from Rafah, which killed three Israeli soldiers. The Ezzedine al-Qassam brigades claimed responsibility for the attack, which led Israel to close the crossing used to transport aid to Gaza.
Hamas has already stated that the Rafah evacuation order is “a dangerous escalation that will have consequences”.
“We have started a limited-scale operation to temporarily evacuate people living in the eastern part of Rafah,” an army spokesman said at a press conference, repeating: “This is a limited-scale operation.”
Asked about the number of people affected, the spokesperson said that “the estimate is around 100 thousand people (…) for now”.
In a statement, the army indicated that “appeals for temporary displacement to the humanitarian zone will be transmitted through leaflets, SMS, telephone calls and messages in Arabic on social media”.
A Rafah resident told France Presse that some people had received voice messages on their cell phones to leave and text messages with a map showing where to go.
After seven months of offensive against Hamas, Israel claims that Rafah is home to thousands of fighters from the Palestinian Islamic group and that victory is impossible without taking the city.
The army spokesman added that “the plan was designed to keep civilians out of harm’s way” and that the aim “is to fight Hamas, not the people and Gaza. And that is why we are carrying out this specific withdrawal.”
CIA chief William Burns, one of the main mediators in the ceasefire talks, was scheduled to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this Monday. It is unclear whether this meeting will take place.
With more than a million displaced Palestinians taking shelter in Rafah, the prospect of an operation with a high number of casualties worries Western powers and neighboring Egypt.
The conflict in the Middle East began after Hamas surprised Israel with a cross-border attack on October 7, in which 1,200 people were killed and 252 taken hostage, according to Israeli records.
The new talks on Saturday and Sunday in Cairo came up against the intransigence of both parties, with Hamas continuing to call for a definitive ceasefire while Israel promises to destroy the Palestinian Islamic movement, which launched an unprecedented attack on its territory on October 7 , triggering the war.
The Israeli offensive launched in the Gaza Strip in reprisal has so far caused 34,683 deaths, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health. Israel has promised to annihilate the Islamist movement, in power in Gaza since 2007, and considers it a terrorist organization, as do the United States and the European Union.
w/ international agencies
Tags: Limited Scale Operation Israel urges Palestinians leave Rafah
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