Displaced people do not rule out that the Israeli army will seek to push them to cross the border into Egypt, in a plan that Cairo has long warned against.
From inside his tent west of Rafah, the displaced Ahmed Abu Rukba told Sky News Arabia that the Israeli threats to invade the city prompted him to prepare to leave again and be displaced for the fourth time, after he had previously moved at the beginning of the war from Jabalia camp to the city of Deir al-Balah and then to Khan Yunis, and finally towards Rafah.
Abu Rukba added: “This time things seem more dangerous, and I do not know where to go with my family. In previous displacement experiences, we were moving from areas targeted by the Israeli army t
o others relatively far from bombing and raids, but currently the entire Gaza Strip is under bombardment, and Rafah is the city.” “The only one we thought would be safe.”
As for Hossam Abd Rabbo, a displaced person from Gaza City to Rafah, he told Sky News Arabia that a state of anxiety and tension grips his family, who is in an UNRWA school in the Shaboura camp, especially with the increasing frequency of bombing.
Dozens were killed and wounded in raids launched by Israeli warplanes on Rafah during the past two days, at a time when the flights of fighter jets and reconnaissance aircraft increased intensively, coinciding with escalating threats to begin the attack.
Pushing towards the Egyptian border
Close to the border strip separating the Palestinian city of Rafah from its Egyptian counterpart, Khaled Mohsen set up a modest tent two months ago to shelter him and his family, who were displaced from the Shujaiya neighborhood, and he is now preparing to leave it in search of a new, safer destination.
Speaking to Sky News Arabia, Mohsen rejected the idea of crossing the Egyptian border despite the danger looming in Rafah, indicating that the bitterness of displacement would be doubled and dreams of returning to his hometown would fade if this scenario occurred.
However, the young Palestinian man expresses concern about an Israeli plan that may force many in Rafah to head towards the border, in the event that the bombing of the city intensifies and the people are prevented from moving north towards Khan Yunis and the central and northern areas of the Gaza Strip.
On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the army to prepare to evacuate the city of Rafah and develop a plan to evacuate civilians and defeat the remaining Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement.
Netanyahu's office said: “The war goal of eliminating Hamas and keeping four Hamas battalions in Rafah cannot be achieved. On the other hand, it is clear that a large-scale operation in Rafah requires the evacuation of the civilian population from the combat zones.”
He added: “For this reason, the Prime Minister directed the Israeli army and the security establishment to present a dual plan to the war government to evacuate the population and destroy the battalions affiliated with the Hamas movement.”
Since the start of the Israeli military operation on the Gaza Strip, which followed the massive attack launched by hundreds of Hamas militants on Israeli towns adjacent to the Strip on October 7, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced to the city of Rafah.
About 1.5 million people are crowded into the small city, most of whom are in modest tents amid extremely low temperatures and in extremely harsh conditions, even though its population before the war did not exceed 320,000 people.
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