Since Monday, Israel has launched a large-scale operation on Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip. While Tel Aviv has ordered Palestinians living east of the city to evacuate, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said Thursday that around 80,000 people had already fled.
“Since Israeli forces intensified their operations on May 6, around 80,000 people have fled Rafah, seeking refuge elsewhere. The price these families are paying is unbearable,” UNRWA regretted on X, specifying that “no place is safe” in the Gaza Strip.
More than a million refugees massed in Rafah
According to the UN, around 1.4 million people are crowded into Rafah, backing on the Egyptian border, including more than a million displaced people pushed there by seven months of fighting and bombings which have reduced it to a state of ruins the north then the center of the Gaza Strip.
On Monday, the Israeli army ordered residents of the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah to evacuate before intensifying its bombardments on these areas and carrying out ground incursions. “It is an operation of limited scale”, insisted a military spokesperson, estimating at “around 100,000” the number of people concerned and called to move towards “the extended humanitarian zone of al-Mawasi”, in about ten kilometers from Rafah.
Severe warning from Washington
Israel affirms that the last battalions of Hamas are entrenched in Rafah and has said it has been determined for several months to carry out a large-scale ground assault there to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement, in power in Gaza since 2007 and which led on October 7 in the southern Israel a bloody attack which sparked the war. Israel’s main military supporter, Washington announced on Wednesday that it would suspend deliveries of certain weapons to its historic ally if the Israeli army entered Rafah.
Alongside Qatar and Egypt, the United States is mediating which has been trying for months to convince Israel and Hamas to conclude a truce intended to allow in particular a pause in the war and the release of Palestinian detainees from Israeli prisons against hostages kidnapped by Hamas during its bloody attack in southern Israel on October 7. Indirect negotiations resumed on Wednesday in Cairo to try to reach a compromise and avoid the announced assault on Rafah.