Tens of thousands of Gazans who had taken refuge in eastern Rafah because of the war raging between the Palestinian resistance factions and the Israeli occupation army since 7 October lived moments of anxiety and tension, as leaflets rained down on the displaced yesterday morning, Monday, warning them against staying in that part of the city and asserting that they could head to the coastal area just three miles from the east of the city, which the leaflets described as safe.
The occupation justified the start of the invasion by saying that the area it is targeting contains three of the four battalions of Al-Qassam, the military wing of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, namely the eastern, northern and southern areas battalions, stressing, according to Israeli Army Radio, that the operation would be limited to the eastern outskirts of Rafah only and not its depth.
According to satellite images obtained by Al Jazeera, the occupation army had pushed intensive military reinforcements to various sites near the eastern border of Rafah. Images taken on 3 May showed that the military build-up had been stationed at three nearby sites since 28 April, confirming the occupation’s intention and planning to invade despite the ongoing Cairo truce talks. These sites are: the Amitai military base, Kibbutz Holit, and near the Karam Abu Salem crossing area.
Evacuating the East of the City
According to the information we received, the areas confirmed for evacuation by the occupation forces in eastern Rafah include: the Shawka area up to the Sufa area, the Al-Salam and Al-Muntazah neighbourhoods block, the Ibad Al-Rahman Mosque block up to the Al-Falouja area, the Al-Najjar Hospital block up to Deir Yassin Street, the Al-Bayouk area, and finally Tabbat Zare’ up to Al-Shuara Street east of the pump. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor added in a statement that the areas covered by the evacuation orders also include Abu Yousef Al-Najjar Hospital, as well as the Rafah land crossing and the Karam Abu Salem commercial crossing.
According to the Monitor’s statement, the areas for which evacuation warnings were issued are home to about 200,000 Gazans, while the occupation directed citizens to hurry and take refuge in areas towards Al-Mawasi in western Khan Younis.
An eyewitness in a Telegram group for communicating with Gazans describes the scene in Rafah now, following the attack launched by the occupation forces, saying it has become a mass grave. He says the only hospital working in the city was the “Kuwaiti Hospital”, with limited capacity serving about one and a half million Palestinian citizens, that some of its medical staff have now left after the threats, and that there are not enough ambulances.
He adds that all hospitals have gone out of service after the occupation ordered their evacuation, especially Al-Najjar Hospital, while the European Hospital is very far away and the road to it has been cut, as reaching it requires passing through Khan Younis, which has become impossible to reach. He points out that all the aid and medical equipment that arrived through aid deliveries run on petrol, which is unavailable, so they have become like useless “scrap”.
Residents were forced to leave on animal-drawn carts for a number of nearby areas, including Al-Mawasi, which the occupation considered safe and to which it called on Gazans to take refuge, while Gazans described it as a coastal area completely unfit for living and overcrowded with displaced people.
But What Led to the Start of the Invasion?
Yesterday morning, Monday, the Israeli war cabinet unanimously approved the start of the evacuation of Rafah, followed by confirmation from official Palestinian television that the operation had begun, and the occupation did indeed launch air strikes on eastern Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip.
While the occupation justifies the invasion as aimed at eliminating Hamas’s four battalions inside Rafah and destroying the tunnels which, it claims, still exist between the Strip and Egypt and help smuggle weapons into the Strip, analysts we spoke to believe the operation aims at full control of the Gaza Strip and the Salah al-Din axis, in a last attempt by the Israeli government to achieve its goals before the possible approval of the truce proposed by Cairo and Doha.
According to the terms of the agreement we received, the framework agreement includes three stages. The first stage, to be implemented over 42 days, most notably includes a temporary halt to military operations between the two sides and the withdrawal of Israeli forces eastward to an area along the border in all areas of Gaza, including Wadi Gaza (the Netzarim axis and the Kuwait roundabout), the return of the displaced to their areas of residence, and withdrawal from Wadi Gaza on the third day after the release of three Israeli prisoners. On day 22, after the release of half of the prisoners, including female soldiers, the occupation forces withdraw from the centre of the Strip to an area near the border, as the displaced continue to return to their homes in the north of the Strip.
In the second stage, scheduled to be implemented over 42 days, a halt to all military operations will be announced, and all Israeli men, civilians and soldiers, will be released in exchange for an agreed number of prisoners in the occupation’s prisons, in addition to the complete withdrawal of the occupation forces from the Gaza Strip.
In the third stage (42 days), the two sides exchange the bodies of the dead, and the Gaza reconstruction plan begins, lasting three to five years, with compensation for those affected, under the supervision of Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations.
As the occupation’s air strikes on the east of the Strip have raged since yesterday, Hamas announced its acceptance of the Cairo truce, while Tel Aviv cast doubt on the acceptance, announcing that it did not take it seriously, and it has not yet agreed to the Egyptian proposal.
Closure of the Rafah Crossing and a Curfew in Sheikh Zuweid
According to Zawia3’s correspondent in Sinai, a state of anticipation and cautious calm prevails across the Egyptian Rafah area in North Sinai after the developments in the Palestinian city of Rafah over the past few hours. Simultaneously with the bombardment, Israeli forces advanced today towards the Palestinian Rafah crossing after a warplane struck the crossing’s surroundings, setting fire to one of the aid warehouses and severely damaging a number of Egyptian trucks parked there.
Given the advance of Israeli tanks and their positioning near the Palestinian Rafah crossing, the crossing’s staff left all parts of the crossing and its surroundings, followed by Israeli tanks advancing towards the crossing and encircling it, and army personnel lowered the Palestinian flag and replaced it with the Israeli flag.
On the Egyptian side of the crossing, civilian employees and army and police forces left all parts of the Egyptian crossing as a precaution against material and human losses in the event of an invasion of the Palestinian city of Rafah in the coming hours, given the development of military events on the ground. For its part, Egypt deployed dozens of military tanks along the border with the Gaza Strip, which is about 14.50 kilometres long, from the Salah al-Din (Philadelphi) axis in the east to the seashore in the west.
In the same context, Egyptian decisions were issued for vehicles to leave the transit parking area in front of the crossing, and movement was restricted, with the area from east of Sheikh Zuweid eastward to the Egyptian border with Gaza declared a military zone where movement is prohibited. Dozens of Palestinian travellers who had headed to the Rafah crossing today on their way back into the Strip returned to El-Arish after the escalation and the announcement of the closure of the Rafah crossing on both the Egyptian and Palestinian sides.
Condemnations and Calls to Suspend Camp David
In a statement today, the Bread and Freedom Party (under formation) condemned the invasion, accusing the United States and some European and Arab countries of supporting Tel Aviv in continuing the war of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the besieged people of Gaza under bombardment.
The party stressed that the Zionist enemy’s expansion of military operations to include Rafah is the greatest actual threat to Egyptian national security since the start of the war in October last year, and a clear breach of the Camp David Accords and a flagrant disregard for all UN resolutions and voices calling for an end to the war, particularly after the great flexibility shown by the resistance factions in engaging with ceasefire initiatives. It called on the Egyptian authorities to protect the northern border immediately, to suspend the Camp David Accords immediately and to cut diplomatic relations completely, since the latest Israeli invasion constitutes an explicit unilateral breach of the peace agreement.
The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement today, condemned the attack launched by the Israeli occupation forces on the Rafah land crossing and the east of the city. Cairo considered, according to the statement, that this escalation threatens the lives of more than one million Palestinians who depend primarily on the crossing as the main lifeline of the Gaza Strip and the safe outlet for the wounded and sick to leave for treatment and for humanitarian and relief aid to enter for Palestinians in Gaza.
