Despite receiving warnings of a possible humanitarian catastrophe, Israel is poised to evacuate Palestinian civilians from Rafah, seeking to launch offensives in a bid to uproot the Hamas terror group in the southern Gaza Strip city, news agency Reuters reported citing a senior Israeli defence official as saying on Wednesday.
A Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government spokesperson stated that Israel was “moving ahead” with a ground operation. However, it did not give a timeline.
The defence official said Israel’s Defence Ministry had bought 40,000 tents, each with the capacity for 10 to 12 people, to house Palestinians relocated from Rafah in advance of an assault.
In a video circulating online showed rows of square white tents going up in Khan Younis, a city located around 5 km from Rafah, the agency reported adding that it could not verify the video. As per the report, the agency reviewed images from satellite company Maxar Technologies, showing tent camps on Khan Younis land that had been vacant weeks ago.
An Israeli government source stated that Netanyahu’s war cabinet planned to hold a meeting in the upcoming two weeks to authorise civilian evacuations, which are expected to take almost a month.
The Israeli military could go into action immediately but was waiting for Netanyahu’s approval, the defence official told Reuters.
Rafah, which lies close to the Egyptian border, is currently sheltering more than a million Palestinians who escaped the Israeli offensive through the rest of Gaza half a year ago. They expressed how terrifying it was to even think about the prospect of fleeing yet again, the report said.
“I have to decide whether to leave Rafah because my mother and I are afraid an invasion could happen suddenly and we won’t get time to escape,” Reuters quoted a 30-year-old Aya, who has been living temporarily in Rafah with her family in a school.
Israel waged its war on October 7 last year to annihilate Hamas after the Islamist group attacks Israeli towns.
The country claims Rafah is home to four Hamas combat battalions that are reinforced by thousands of retreating fighters, which must be defeated to achieve victory, the report read.
David Satterfield, U.S. special envoy for Middle East humanitarian told Reuters, “We could not support a Rafah ground operation without an appropriate, credible, executable humanitarian plan precisely because of the complications for delivery of assistance.”
He further said that “The US is in discussions with Israel on what it believes are alternate ways of addressing a challenge which it recognises, which is Hamas military present in Rafah.”
