Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip, It is the place where they take refuge today, in makeshift camps and UN tents, around 1.5 million of Palestinians after having been displaced from their territories due to the start of the war with Israel on October 7.
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This city, located on the border with Egypt, has welcomed five times more people than its usual population in recent months, a situation that has caused the saturation of public health services, as well as shortage of food, medicine and wateraccording to NGOs in the Palestinian territory.
Rafah is the last urban center where the Israeli army has not yet penetrated and the main entry point for humanitarian aid, insufficient to meet the needs of a population threatened in the middle of winter by famines and epidemics, according to the UN.
Despite the critical situation in the area, at the beginning of February, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the army to prepare an offensive on
Rafah, the “last bastion” of Hamas, according to him. However, on Sunday he assured that Israel would open “a safe passage” for the population to leave the city, without specifying where.
The United States, Israel's great ally, said it opposed an offensive against
Rafah if there are no guarantees for the safety of civilians, while UN Humanitarian Affairs chief Martin Griffiths warned that “military operations in Rafah could lead to a massacre.”
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But operations in the area appear to be advancing despite warnings from the United States and Joe Biden's request to the Prime Minister of Israel to refrain from an attack without a protection plan for the Palestinians. On Tuesday, the Gazan city of Rafah received artillery fire from the Israeli Army on Tuesday, for the first time since Israel announced its ground incursion into the area on Friday.
On Monday, the area was also attacked during a military operation in which two Argentine-Israeli hostages were rescued. Official media stated that more than 100 citizens, including children and women, were killed, and hundreds more were injured. Although the Hebrew country assures that several of the deceased were Hamas militiamen.
'The residents are deeply traumatized'
As international efforts continue to guarantee a ceasefire in Gaza, the director of the Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, reported this Tuesday that The residents of the enclave are “deeply traumatized” by the war with Israel and fear a full-scale assault on Rafah.
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The question is: Where will the civilians go? There is absolutely no safe place in Rafah anymore
“People are anxious and afraid of a possible large-scale military operation,” said Philippe Lazzarini, after leaving a briefing with member states at UN headquarters in Geneva.
“If the assault occurs, the question is: 'Where will the civilians go?' There is absolutely no safe place in Rafah anymore and the fear is that the number of deaths and injuries will increase significantly again.
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Lazzarini insisted that it is unfeasible to expect the more than one million displaced people crammed into the Rafah governorate to move again so that Israeli forces can continue their sweep for Hamas militants.
“They are being asked to move, the question is where,” he said, noting that in Rafah, every free piece of land in a 20-kilometer stretch is occupied by hundreds of thousands of people living in makeshift plastic shelters.
For its part, the American organization Refugees International said that a ground offensive in Rafah “would have catastrophic results for the civilian population,” so “The United States must use all influence at its disposal to avoid a humanitarian cataclysm“.
They have nowhere to go (…) They cannot return to their homes because many have been destroyed
Likewise, the chancellor of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, assured this Monday in a press conference that Israel should “stop and think seriously” about any ground offensive in Rafah and the impact it would have on the 1.5 million people sheltered there, the BBC reported.
“They have nowhere to go,” he said. “They can't go south to Egypt. They can't go north and return to their homes because many have been destroyed.”
“We are very concerned about the situation and we want Israel to stop and think seriously before taking any additional measures,” the foreign minister added.
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INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL
TIME
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