Petrified
Palestinians in the cramped southern Gaza Strip border city of Rafah scrambled to
evade bombardment Saturday as they prepared to flee an expected Israeli ground
offensive, dreading the prospect of again searching for safety in a place with
few if any, options to escape the war.
اضافة اعلان
Israeli
officials have declared that the next phase in their effort to destroy Hamas
will be in Rafah, and on Friday, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu announced that “any forceful action in Rafah would require the
evacuation of the civilian population from combat zones.”
The Israeli
government has not specified where the civilians would be expected to go. Rafah
sits along the border with Egypt, which has so far refused to take in
Palestinian refugees, fearful over its security and worried that the
displacement could become permanent and undermine Palestinian aspirations for
statehood.
On Saturday,
Germany, Britain, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia joined an international chorus
condemning Israel’s stated intention of expanding its ground invasion into the
city. Aid groups, the secretary-general of the United Nations, and officials
from the Biden administration have warned that an Israeli attack on Rafah would
be disastrous.
“any forceful action in Rafah would require the evacuation of the civilian population from combat zones.”
“An
offensive by the Israeli army on Rafah would be a humanitarian catastrophe,”
Annalena Baerbock, the foreign minister of Germany, said in a statement on
social media. “The people in #Gaza cannot disappear into thin air.”
Britain’s
foreign secretary, David Cameron, said on social media that he was “deeply
concerned about the prospect of a military offensive in Rafah.”
Nabil Abu
Rudeineh, the spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority in the Israel-occupied
West Bank, on Saturday called on the United States to pressure Israel to stop
what he called “the genocidal massacres” of Palestinian civilians. Israel
denies it has committed genocide or purposely targeted civilians. The United
States has been strongly supportive of Israel since it launched the war in Gaza
on Oct. 7, after a Hamas-led attack in southern Gaza. Washington sends billions
in weapons and other military aid to the Israeli military.
Netanyahu on
Saturday sought to soothe public concern after Moody’s, citing the prolonged
war with Hamas and the effect it was having on Israel’s finances, downgraded
Israel’s credit score for the first time in years. Calling the Israeli economy
“robust,” he said in a statement that the damage would be reversed after the
war with Hamas ends.
The concerns
— about a devastating loss of life, a disruption of humanitarian assistance,
and a further depletion of essential services — came as Israeli forces
bombarded Rafah and other parts of southern Gaza with airstrikes, Palestinian
news media reported. Multiple people were killed when Israeli airstrikes struck
a vehicle and homes where displaced people were sheltering.
The
continued airstrikes have terrified more than half of Gaza’s 2.2 million people
who have taken shelter in Rafah during four months of Israeli bombardment and
warnings by the Israeli military to flee south. They have fled fighting and
destruction elsewhere to pack themselves into a city where finding enough food,
water, and medicine has become a daily struggle.
Rents have
skyrocketed, and multiple families share small apartments. Tent camps have
taken over most open areas. Food and fuel have become so scarce that some
people have taken to burning old clothes and pages from books to heat canned
beans and bake flatbread.
Already, the
overcrowding has taxed the area’s resources, and newly displaced people
continue to arrive as fighting rages on in the city of Khan Younis to the
north.
“It is very
bad; the hygiene level is very low,” said Fathi Abu Snema, 45, who has been
sheltering with his family in a UN school in Rafah since early in the war.
“Here we eat only canned food, which is anything but healthy. Everything else
is very expensive.”
He feared
that many would die if Israel invaded Rafah. “I prefer to die here,” he said.
“There is not one safe place to go in Gaza. You could get killed anywhere, even
in the street.”
Sana
al-Kabariti, a pharmacist and skin care expert, fled to Rafah from Gaza City,
where both her home and her clinic have since been destroyed, she said.
Even if the
war were to stop soon, she expects there would be little interest in her skin
care services because people would be focused on trying to rebuild their homes
and lives, she said.
“I am
worried about my future in Gaza,” said Kabariti, 33. “I need to leave the
strip.”
More than 27,000 people have been
killed by Israel in Gaza during the four-month war.
“Here we eat only canned food, which is anything but healthy. Everything else is very expensive.”
Netanyahu
signaled last week that Israel intended to push farther south, into what he
described as the enclave’s last Hamas stronghold. His office said in a
statement that it would be impossible to fulfill Israel’s stated objective of
crushing Hamas’ rule in Gaza without destroying what it said were the group’s
four battalions in Rafah. The military’s “combined plan” would have to both
“evacuate the civilian population and topple the battalions,” the statement
said.
The crisis
in Rafah reflects the dire circumstances across the enclave. The World Food
Program warned last month that the territory’s entire population of Gaza was
suffering crisis levels of food insecurity or worse. In late December, the
agency said that 9 out of 10 people were eating less than one meal a day, and
the situation has worsened as aid groups struggle to deliver the little aid
that is entering Gaza.
Um Mohammad
Abu Awwad, a 35-year-old mother, said that her family sheltering in the north
of the territory had not been able to find any flour to buy for weeks. Even
when flour was available, she said, a bag would cost around $200 — an
impossible sum for their family, which has no income amid the war.
Awwad said
she has had to resort to grinding hay and animal fodder as a substitute for
flour. But even animal feed was becoming more expensive now, she said.
‘The adults can survive, but the
children are dying of hunger’
“We want
food and water to keep our children alive,” Awwad said in a voice message this
past week. “The adults can survive, but the children are dying of hunger.”
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