Israel increases offensive in Rafah, a city that has been a refuge for displaced Palestinians

First modification: 02/03/2024 – 15:56

4 min

The fear of the Gazans regarding the expansion of Israel's ground operation is latent, especially after the Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, announced, on Thursday, February 1, that the offensive of his troops would now concentrate on Rafah, an area that borders Egypt and the only border not administered by Israel, therefore an access point for the movement of people, goods and humanitarian aid.

For the UN, Rafah has become a “pressure cooker of desperation” with a population that It now exceeds 12,000 people per square kilometer, more than one and a half times the population density of Singapore, according to the organization Save the Children. and which has received hundreds of Palestinians fleeing attacks by sky, land and sea by troops sent by Tel Aviv.

If the Israeli tanks keep coming, “we will be left with two options: stay and die or climb the walls of Egypt (…) Most of the population of Gaza is in Rafah. If the tanks break in, it will be a massacre like never before during this war,” Emad, 55 years old and father of six children, told Reuters news agency.

And it is that The conflict has swept away large sectors of the small coastal enclave, displacing more than 85% of its inhabitants, according to United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)and has put almost a quarter of the inhabitants in a situation of malnutrition and physical weakness according to international organizations.

United Nations data confirms this, in the last 24 hours the international organization's satellite headquarters showed that more than 69,000 structures in Gaza, that is, almost a third of all those in the territory, have suffered at least moderate damage in almost four months. of combats.

Information that comes just two days after the Israeli Ministry of Defense warned that its troops could expand fighting to Rafah after having concentrated their military efforts in Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza.

“We are fulfilling our missions in Khan Younis and we will also reach Rafah and eliminate the terrorist elements that threaten us,” said Yoav Gallant, Israel's Defense Minister on the evening of February 1.

A statement that put at stake Israel's strategic relations with the United States and Egypt, who almost flatly rejected sending troops to Rafah. However, after Gallant's words, the offensive intensified.

In the most recent report, it was reported that a residential building east of Rafah was hit by the bombings, killing at least 13 people, including four women and three children, as confirmed by officials at the hospital in Gaza to which they went. transferred the bodies.

The second of the attacks reached a house in the Jeneina area, in which two men and two women died. Their bodies were also taken to Abu Yousef al-Najjar hospital, the main health center in Rafah, as confirmed by an AP news agency journalist who was there.

Israel is silent about this attack, but says it has killed 10,000 Hamas fighters so far.

The Gaza Health Ministry, on the other hand, stated that 107 people died in the last 24 hours and raised the death toll in Gaza to 27,238 during this escalation of conflict in which at least 66,000 people have been injured, which began on October 7, 2023 in response to the armed incursion by Hamas into Israel, which left 1,200 dead according to the Israeli Government.

The initial truce proposal

In parallel with the deadly offensive lies a document that would seek an initial phase of a temporary cessation of hostilities, supported by Hamas and mediated by international entities and countries such as Qatar, which confirmed last Thursday, February 1, the approval by the Islamist group.

However, although the United States and Egypt are also in the middle of the talks and have negotiated the terms of the agreement, a source close to Hamas, interviewed by the AFP news agency, said that “there is still no agreement on the framework of the agreement – the factions have important observations – and Qatar's statement is hasty and is not true.”

On the table, a new truce proposal to end the conflict in Gaza

01:45

The deal, which comes nearly four months after Hamas took some 250 hostages in its surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, still needs to be worked out by negotiators hoping to narrow the gap between Israel and Hamas.

An objective that becomes increasingly complicated as tensions in the Middle East spread following the United States airstrikes against dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria, which were carried out on the night of Friday, February 2 in retaliation for the drone strikes that killed American soldiers in Jordan last weekend.

With AP, AFP and Reuters.