Official statements condemning, UN statements denouncing, Egyptian warnings of suspending the peace treaty between Egypt and Tel Aviv, amid strongly worded warnings from Western countries, the occupation’s biggest backers, warning it against continuing the war or launching escalatory raids on the city of Rafah. But the occupation authority listens to no one. This is the scene now in a region that has come to sit on hot coals.
| Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of the Israeli occupation government, issued directives to the occupation army to prepare the necessary plans to evacuate the displaced and civilians from Rafah in order to launch a ground attack on it, raising the most important question: where will Gazans go? Towards Egypt?! |
Israeli occupation forces began launching violent raids on the city of Rafah, in the south of Gaza, last night, killing more than 100 Palestinian civilians, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society today, Monday, and the numbers are rising daily because of the occupation leaders’ insistence on continuing the aerial bombardment of the border city adjacent to Egypt, as the raids targeted the border strip separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt, known as the “Salah al-Din Corridor”. The occupation army admitted carrying out the raids, claiming it targeted “terrorist” groups, even though children, women and elderly people are among the dead.
In the same context, Al-Aqsa TV, run by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, announced that two mosques and 14 houses had been targeted in various areas of Rafah.
Half of Gaza’s Population in Rafah
The United Nations says Rafah is hosting more than 1.3 million displaced people, about half of the Gaza Strip’s population, while other estimates raise the number to 1.5 million Gazans out of the Strip’s 2.2 million inhabitants. Rafah’s population before the war was about 300,000 Palestinians, meaning the city is now bearing about six times its capacity. Some of these people have been displaced about six times, fleeing Israeli bombardment. The director of Abu Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital, a government hospital in the Palestinian city of Rafah, pointed out that the medical facilities in Rafah “cannot cope with the large number of casualties from the Israeli occupation’s bombardment”.
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The displaced live in dire conditions in overcrowded shelters such as schools, in the streets or on any patch of land, hemmed in by the Egyptian and Israeli border fences and the sea. Doctors and aid workers are struggling to provide basic aid and stop the spread of disease among the displaced. Aid agencies say they cannot move people to safer areas because Israeli forces are stationed in the north, and the aid allowed into the Strip is extremely limited. According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, there are civilians trapped under the rubble, and there is still a heavy presence of warplanes in Rafah’s skies, according to its statement. |
The Palestinian presidency called on the international community and the US administration to act urgently to prevent the Israeli occupation forces from advancing by land towards the city of Rafah, because that would mean thousands of victims.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the official spokesperson for the Palestinian presidency, said the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people must stop immediately, as must the daily massacres they are subjected to in the Strip, stressing that Netanyahu’s talk of a safe corridor for citizens is “pure nonsense and deception of the world”, because there is no longer any safe place in the Gaza Strip, and citizens cannot return amid the continued bombardment of the centre and north of the Strip.
The city of Rafah lies in the south of the Gaza Strip on the border strip separating it from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and is the largest city in the Strip on the Egyptian border, with an area of 55 square kilometres, about 107 km south-west of Jerusalem.
The only border crossing between the Strip and Egypt is in the city of Rafah, and it has been relied on mainly for decades, especially since 2007, to bring aid into the Strip and to get the injured out for treatment and travel.
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Most of Rafah’s current residents have been displaced by fighting from other areas of Gaza; they live in tents they have put up from metal rods, sticks or tree branches and covered with fabric or plastic, and Rafah is their last refuge. Many of the displaced have preferred to stay in the western part of the city near the sea, fearing an invasion from the eastern side near the border. Thousands of tents have been erected in Rafah since the beginning of December near the Egyptian border. |
Netanyahu Has Ears, but Does Not Hear
The occupation’s prime minister has ignored the growing criticism of the ground attack on Rafah, including criticism from many Western countries and the European Union; it has even come from his biggest backer, “US President Joe Biden”, who described Netanyahu as the main obstacle to attempts to persuade Israel to agree to a ceasefire, according to the US network NBC, citing informed sources, adding that Biden said in private conversations that dealing with Netanyahu has become impossible, as he wants the war to continue so that he can stay in power.
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The US newspaper The New York Times quoted a senior Western diplomat in Cairo as saying that Egyptian officials urged their Western counterparts to inform the occupation authority that they consider any move to force Gazans to cross into Sinai a violation that would effectively suspend the peace agreement. Egypt has sent about 40 tanks and armoured personnel carriers to north-eastern Sinai in the past two weeks, according to Reuters, citing two unnamed Egyptian security officials. Cairo has threatened to suspend the Camp David treaty if the occupation breaches the security and military protocols of this treaty, which paved the way for peace between the two countries. In a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry hours before the occupation’s raids, Egypt stressed that it “categorically rejects the statements by senior Israeli government officials about the Israeli forces’ intention to launch a military operation in the city of Rafah in the south of Gaza”, warning of what it described as “the dire consequences of such a measure”. The statement called for all international and regional efforts to join forces to prevent the targeting of Palestinian Rafah. Egypt considered that targeting Rafah with a military operation, along with obstructing the entry of humanitarian aid into the Strip, is “an actual contribution to implementing the policy of displacing the Palestinian people and liquidating their cause”. Cairo said taking measures that further complicate the situation will harm everyone’s interests without exception. |
Did Egypt Know in Advance?
A report by Israel’s Channel 12, whose details were carried by The Times of Israel, revealed that “senior Israeli officials from the intelligence service (Mossad), the General Security Service (Shin Bet) and the Ministry of Defence contacted Egyptian officials on Sunday evening to ease their concerns about Rafah”. The report added that the Israeli security officials “informed their counterparts in Egypt that Israel would not take unilateral measures and that it would act in coordination with Cairo”.
Calls to Cut Ties
Egyptian popular calls to cut ties with the Israeli occupation are growing. On Sunday, the Egyptian Journalists’ Syndicate demanded the expulsion of the Israeli occupation state’s ambassador from Cairo, the withdrawal of the Egyptian ambassador from the occupied Palestinian territories and the cancellation of the peace agreement between the two countries, in rejection of the “Israeli massacres” in the Gaza Strip.
In its statement, the syndicate considered that the occupation’s threat to launch a military operation in the city of Rafah, in the far south of the Strip, constitutes a “threat” to Egypt’s national security, saying Cairo must “take all decisive defensive means”.
The syndicate called on the Egyptian government to criminalise “all forms of normalisation” with the occupation, stop the entry of goods produced by companies on popular boycott lists because they are accused of supporting Israel, according to the statement, and also cancel the operating permits of companies and factories that take this position as well.
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Egyptian MP Mostafa Bakry said his country’s army is “on alert” after the start of Israeli military operations in the city of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, during the night. Bakry wrote on his “X” page, formerly Twitter: “The air, land and sea bombardment has begun against our people in Rafah. Hundreds of martyrs and wounded are falling, fires are burning, children are homeless. Death pursues them everywhere, from north to south. Our army is on alert to confront any developments”. The Egyptian MP continued: “National security and Egypt’s borders are a red line. The entire Egyptian people support their army and the Supreme Commander. Our soil is sacred. We will not bet on the West or America; we bet on ourselves and our great army to protect our national soil and reject the liquidation of the Palestinian cause”, as he put it. He concluded: “What is happening in Gaza is a holocaust unlike anything modern history has witnessed. It is a stain of shame on the forehead of the whole world. It is a declaration of the fall of all international organisations and conventions”, as he put it. |
The occupation authority had announced launching raids on the city of Rafah and freeing two hostages in a joint operation between the army and the security services, while the Palestine Red Crescent said the Israeli military operations killed more than 100 people last night, as a result of 40 airstrikes launched by occupation aircraft on the border city.
Unheeded UN Warnings
The United Nations warned of a catastrophic situation in the city of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, if Tel Aviv carries out its threat to invade the city militarily.
The United Nations said it “faces enormous pressure to draw up a plan to help more than a million displaced Palestinians in Rafah, as Israel prepares for a large-scale military operation in the area”.
The city is also suffering at the health level, with only a few hospitals, most notably Rafah Central Hospital, the Kuwaiti Specialised Hospital and Al-Shahid Abu Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital, all of which suffer shortages of medical supplies and a lack of electricity and energy sources, affecting the ability of doctors and health teams to provide treatment and care for patients.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus renewed his call for a ceasefire in Gaza, expressing particular concern about the Israeli attacks on Rafah, where most of the Strip’s population has been displaced. He said only 15 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals “are still functioning partially or minimally”, and that relief teams are doing their utmost in extremely difficult conditions.
Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, he added that the World Health Organization continues to call for safe access for relief teams and humanitarian supplies, for Hamas to release the hostages, and for a ceasefire.
Ghebreyesus said: “I am particularly concerned about the recent attacks on Rafah, where most of Gaza’s population has been displaced by the destruction”.
He added: “We have so far delivered 447 tonnes of medical supplies to Gaza, but it is just a drop in the ocean of a need that grows day after day”.
The United Nations says more than 85 per cent of Gaza’s population has been displaced and faces famine, and one in five children under the age of five suffers from acute malnutrition.
The Occupation Uses Everything It Has
The Israeli occupation has displayed all its military capabilities in the ongoing war on Gaza, using its arsenal of guided and bunker-busting bombs and missiles, which destroyed more than 30,000 homes and residential buildings in Gaza in just five days, according to official Palestinian statistics.
According to the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, the occupation used everything it has in the concentrated bombardment, from bunker-busting bombs to “Hellfire” missiles for striking tunnels, which it obtained from the United States.
| The Israeli army obtained years ago 750 bunker- and tunnel-busting bombs and 3,000 “Hellfire” missiles designed for attack helicopters, and thousands of GPS-guided bombs aimed at destroying the Strip’s infrastructure, in addition to 50 BLU-113 bunker-busting bombs and 700 others of the BLU-109 type. |
Since the attack by the Palestinian resistance factions led by Hamas, the Biden administration has said it is supplying Israel with equipment to convert “dumb” or unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions, as well as small diameter bombs (SDBs), which experts say are effective weapons for striking underground targets, according to the US newspaper The Washington Post.
The newspaper said the US administration “gave the green light to sell precision-guided weapons worth USD 735 million to Israel”.
The Israeli occupation army chose to increase its arsenal of US GBU-28 bombs, designed to penetrate fortified targets deep underground, even though the bombs leave huge craters and can inflict heavy civilian casualties.
| The Israeli occupation also receives military aid from other Western countries. In Germany, officials approved the use in Gaza of two of the five Heron TP drones leased to the country, Reuters reported. |
The spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Dr Ashraf Al-Qudra, had announced that the Israeli occupation committed 19 massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, in which 164 Palestinians were killed and 200 injured in the past 24 hours. The toll of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip thus rose to 28,340 martyrs and 67,984 injured since 7 October. A number of victims are still under the rubble and in the streets, as the occupation prevents ambulance and civil defence crews from reaching them.
