The Israeli army announced on Saturday May 11 that“about 300 000″ Palestinians had left the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah, on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, since the evacuation order was issued on May 6. “So far, around 300,000 residents have moved to the Al-Mawassi humanitarian zone”, a few kilometers away, indicates in a press release the army, which is preparing a ground offensive in this city where some 1.4 million inhabitants, the majority pushed there by the fighting, are crowded together. Follow our live stream.
An ongoing Israeli intervention in Rafah. The Israeli army, which has been carrying out incursions into the east of this town in the south of the enclave since Tuesday and has taken control of the crossing point with Egypt, said on Friday it was continuing its “precision anti-terrorist operation”. Despite international warnings, Benjamin Netanyahu continues to present an offensive in Rafah as necessary to “to overcome” Hamas, despite the presence of 1.4 million Palestinians, including many internally displaced people in the Gaza Strip.
The United States considers it “reasonable to believe” that Israel violated international law in Gaza. A long-awaited report from the US State Department, made public on Friday, however, recognizes that the United States has not been able to achieve at this stage “conclusions” definitive on this issue, due to lack of sufficient information, and that Washington is therefore not forced to suspend the sending of weapons to Israel. Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip continue Saturday morning.
The UN symbolically comes out in favor of Palestinian membership. An overwhelming majority of the UN General Assembly voted Friday for Palestinians to be full members of the organization. To succeed, such an initiative requires, in addition to the vote of the General Assembly, a positive recommendation from the Security Council. But the United States vetoed it on April 18.