Israeli Army moves its offensive to Rafah; Qatar signals Hamas' “initial” support for Gaza truce plan

Cornered near the border fence with Egypt and with nowhere in sight to flee to. This is the situation for 1.9 million of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, where Israeli troops are now concentrating their attacks by air, sea and land.

The situation worsens – in the area where most of the population moved after the land incursion in the north of the enclave almost four months ago -, after the Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, announced on Thursday night February 1 that its troops are now heading to Rafah.

That city, along with Deir al-Balah, near Khan Younis, the main southern city, is among the last remaining areas for Israeli forces to attack, Gallant said.

“We are carrying out our missions in Khan Younis and we will also reach Rafah and eliminate the terrorist elements that threaten us,” said the head of the Defense Ministry in a statement, referring to the members of the Islamist group Hamas.

And it did not take many hours after its announcement for the offensive to intensify there. Israeli forces bombed this Friday, February 2, the outskirts of the last refuge in Rafah, while Palestinian civilians are trapped, since they are not allowed to leave Gazan territory.

Israel claims to have killed 10,000 Hamas fighters so far, while, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, Israeli strikes have killed 27,131 people, most of them women and children. On Thursday night and early Friday morning alone, at least 105 Gazans lost their lives.

For its part, the Hamas press office assured that air and artillery assaults by Israeli troops were recorded around Khan Younis.

Die or climb the walls of Egypt

Thousands of people have continued to arrive in Rafah in recent days, with their few belongings in their arms and dragging small carts in which they transport their children, after Israeli soldiers launched one of their largest attacks of the ongoing war, in the neighboring city of Khan Younis.

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

The south is also the only part of Gaza with limited access to food and medical aid, which arrives across the border, so the area has become a labyrinth full of improvised camping tents, in the middle of rain, mud and winter temperatures.

The wind and cold have worsened the misery, after tearing down and flooding the tents.

“What should we do? We live in multiple miseries, a war, famine and now rain (…) We used to wait for winter to enjoy watching the rain from the balcony of our house. Now our house no longer exists and the rainwater has flooded the store we ended up in,” lamented Um Badri, a displaced mother of five from Gaza City.

UN: Rafah is a “pressure cooker of despair”

This is how the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) described the situation in the city in the far south of Gaza, highlighting that the hostilities in Khan Younis have forced more people to flee towards Rafah.

“I want to underline our deep concern about the escalation of hostilities in Khan Yunis, which has led to an increase in the number of internally displaced people seeking refuge in Rafah in recent days (…) Thousands of Palestinians have continued to flee to the south, which is already home to more than half of the population of some 2.3 million people. Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair, and we fear for what comes next,” said Jens Laerke, OCHA spokesperson.

As the Israeli attacks intensify, the grave humanitarian situation deepens.

The UN continues to urge the world not to abandon Gaza, after countries such as the United States, Germany, France, Austria, Romania, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Netherlands and Italy, announced in recent days that they are suspending their funding to the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).

The drastic measure came after the release of a report from Israel's intelligence agencies that indicated that 12 people who were part of UNRWA had participated in the bloody Hamas attacks in southern Israel, on December 7, the day in which the ongoing conflict escalated.

Humanitarian agency leaders continue to call for the decision to be reversed, while warning that failing to do so would leave UNRWA unable to continue operating at the end of this month.

“Across the Gaza Strip, almost 2 million people – the vast majority women and children – depend on UNRWA for their survival while the Agency manages overcrowded shelters, food assistance and primary health care,” the organization stressed this Friday.

Hamas signals “initial” support for truce proposal, says Qatar

While the fighting and attacks advance, the group that controls the enclave would have expressed “initial” support for a temporary cessation of hostilities, as reported in the last hours by the Government of Qatar, one of the mediators between the parties to the conflict.

The spokesman for the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Majed al-Ansari, stated that there are hopes for “good news” about a new pause in fighting “in the next two weeks.”

The information was released after last Tuesday, January 30, a plan was presented to the Islamist movement that, in addition to a provisional relief from the attacks, would allow the release of the hostages who still remain in Gaza.

However, 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.”

If it goes ahead, the pause would come after the week-long truce that at the end of 2023 culminated in the surrender of a total of 105 kidnapped people and the release of 240 Palestinian women and minors who were in Israeli prisons.

With Reuters, AFP and local media