Israel has warned that its army will launch an offensive against Rafah if Israeli hostages held in Gaza are not released by the start of Ramadan, despite international pressure to protect the estimated 1.4 million Palestinians crowded into the area. city.
As hopes for a truce fade, part of the international community is concerned about the fallout that a military operation would have for the civilian population living in often precarious conditions in Rafah, backed by Egypt’s closed border.
“If by Ramadan, the hostages are not at home, the fighting will continue everywhere, including in the Rafah region,” Israeli Minister Benny Gantz, a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet, declared in Jerusalem on Sunday. .
“Hamas has a choice. They can surrender, free the hostages and the civilians of Gaza will be able to celebrate the holiday of Ramadan,” added the former army chief in a speech to the Conference of Presidents of the Main American Jewish Organizations.
Ramadan, the holy month of Muslims, begins around March 10.
During the attack of unprecedented violence perpetrated against Israel by commandos of the Islamist movement Hamas on October 7, around 250 people were kidnapped and taken to Gaza. According to Israel, 130 hostages are still being held there, 30 of whom are believed to have died.
More than 1,160 people were killed that day, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
“Minimize” the number of victims
In retaliation, Israel vowed to annihilate Hamas, which it classifies, like the United States and the European Union, as “terrorist”. Its offensive in the Gaza Strip left 28,985 dead, the vast majority civilians, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
Serious concerns have been expressed around the world, including by Washington, Israel’s ally, over the prospect of an offensive against Rafah that Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to launch.
PHOTO GIL COHEN-MAGEN, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
“Anyone who wants to stop us from carrying out an operation in Rafah is effectively telling us to lose the war. I am not going to give in to that,” the Israeli Prime Minister said on Saturday, before reaffirming on Sunday that he was aiming for “total victory” against Hamas.
According to Benny Gantz, an offensive would be carried out in a coordinated manner and within the framework of a dialogue with “American and Egyptian partners”, “by facilitating the evacuation of civilians” to “minimize […] as much as possible” the number of victims in their ranks.
Israel has not yet officially provided details on the modalities of an evacuation of civilians and the location of their relocation.
French President Emmanuel Macron and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sissi expressed “their firm opposition” to an offensive as well as “to any forced displacement of populations” towards Egypt, Paris said on Sunday in a press release.
Rafah and the town of Khan Younes, located in the south of the Gaza Strip and a few kilometers apart, as well as other areas of the Palestinian territory were the target of Israeli bombardments which left 127 dead in 24 hours, indicated Hamas Ministry of Health on Sunday.
In Khan Younes, hometown of Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahia Sinouar, alleged mastermind of the October 7 attack, the Nasser hospital “is no longer functional after a week-long siege, followed by a raid in course,” said the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on X.
PHOTO SAID KHATIB, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Smoke rises above Khan Younes in the southern Gaza Strip during an Israeli bombardment, February 18, 2024.
Seven patients, including a child, have died there since Friday due to power cuts, and “70 members of medical staff including intensive care doctors” have been arrested, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
Israeli soldiers entered the hospital on Thursday based on intelligence that hostages were being held there, and arrested around 100 people.
An army spokesman, Richard Hecht, assured that diesel and oxygen had been provided so that the establishment could operate.
The occupation before international justice
In the occupied West Bank, three Palestinians were also killed on Sunday in an Israeli raid, including a member of an armed group, according to consistent sources, in a context of high tensions and intensification of violence in this territory since October 7.
On Monday in The Hague, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest court of the United Nations, must begin examining the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967.
These hearings, carried out following a request from the UN General Assembly, are entirely separate from South Africa’s recent high-profile applications to the court.
Israel’s main ally, the United States, for its part, is threatening to block a new draft resolution at the UN Security Council demanding “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire”.
PHOTO MOHAMMED ABED, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
One man comforts another as he views the destruction caused by overnight Israeli airstrikes in Rafah on February 18.
Washington threatens to veto the text presented by Algeria on the grounds that a vote could “go against” the negotiations involving the Egyptian, American and Qatari mediators with a view to a truce and a release of hostages.
However, Qatar Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdelrahmane al-Thani said on Saturday that the talks were “not very promising”.
Virulent attack from Lula
In a scathing attack on Israel, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva declared that “what is happening in Gaza is not a war, it is a genocide”, comparing the Israeli offensive to the extermination of Jews by the Nazis.
The Brazilian president “dishonored the memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis […] He should be ashamed,” retorted Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mr. Lula also reiterated his call for a settlement of the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the basis of two states, Israeli and Palestinian, as advocated by much of the international community.
But the Netanyahu government estimated that “recognition of a Palestinian state after the massacre of October 7 would constitute an immense reward for terrorism”.
As humanitarian aid trickles into the besieged Gaza Strip, Israeli protesters have blocked aid trucks from Egypt en route to Rafah from passing through the Nizzana crossing point in southern Gaza. Israel, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.