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Pressure has increased in Rafah since Israel deployed its military operation in that city in the Gaza Strip in early February. Benjamin Netanyahu's government claims that it only seeks to pursue Hamas to its last stronghold. However, more than 1.4 million displaced Palestinians take refuge there, having had to flee their homes since October 7, when the conflict escalated. Will this operation serve to protect Israel's security or will it end in a humanitarian catastrophe? We discussed it in this debate.
Rafah is one of the new centers of the war between Israel and Hamas. This city in the south of the Gaza Strip is the scene of Israeli military operations, after the Army reduced its activities in the north of the Palestinian enclave. It went from having 300,000 inhabitants before the new wave of the conflict to receiving about half of the 2.3 million Gazans in the Gaza Strip. Now, those people are in the crossfire.
For its part, Israel insists that it maintains its military operation in Rafah to remove all Hamas militants from their hideouts in what would be their “last bastion.” In this context, Israeli forces managed to rescue two of the kidnapped people who were still in the hands of the Islamist group: two men aged 60 and 70, respectively. That same day, Israel deployed one of the deadliest bombing raids in recent months, killing nearly 67 Palestinians in just two hours, although numbers vary.
US President Joe Biden asked Israel to refrain from continuing its offensive until it has a viable plan to protect civilians. Meanwhile, tensions are increasing with Egypt, because Rafah is the last city in the Gaza Strip to the south and borders its territory. For this reason, the Government of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi rejects Israel's military operation at that point in the Gaza Strip, fearing that the fighting in civilian territory will cause an exodus of Palestinians to Egypt, something that the country rejects.
Meanwhile, Palestinians have been left at a crossroads with nowhere to go. In this sense, from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs They warn that the operation in Rafah could end in a massacre of enormous magnitude. Is Rafah heading towards catastrophe as the United Nations warns? Or is this a strategy to defend Israel and its right to exist as Benjamin Netanyahu proposes? We analyze it with our guests:
- Diego Khamis, lawyer and executive director of the Palestinian Community of Chile.
- Marcelo Birmajer, writer and journalist, expert on conflict in the Middle East.
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