War on Gaza: Over a million people flee Rafah as Israel considers truce proposal

The United Nations said that more than 80,000 people have fled the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip since Monday, and Israeli tanks were reported to be gathering near built-up areas amid ongoing bombardment. 

Palestinian armed groups said they were targeting Israeli forces to the east. The Israeli army said that its ground forces were carrying out “directed activity” east of Rafah. The United Nations warned of running out of food and fuel because it is not receiving aid through nearby crossings. 

Israeli forces took control of the Rafah crossing with Egypt and closed it at the beginning of their operation. At the same time, the United Nations said that the arrival of its employees and trucks to the reopened Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel is extremely dangerous.

This came at a time when the Israeli Prime Minister rejected a threat from the US President to stop supplying some weapons to Israel if it launched a significant attack on “population centres” in Rafah. Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel could “stand alone” if necessary. After seven months of war in Gaza, Israel insists that “victory” is impossible without seizing the city and eliminating Hamas’s last remaining strongholds.

 But with more than a million displaced Palestinians taking refuge there, the United Nations and Western powers have warned that any all-out attack could lead to large numbers of civilian casualties and a humanitarian catastrophe. Residents and aid workers in Rafah said that the sounds of artillery and air strikes continued on Thursday. 

Louise Waterridge, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said that she was in a health facility in the west and could “hear the bombing and feel it approaching.” “The building shakes frequently,” she said. “There is a constant buzz of drones.” “The fear and tension that controlled people in Rafah have now become terror.” 

Palestinian media said that two people were killed on Thursday afternoon in an Israeli air strike in the Al-Jeneina neighbourhood, one of the eastern areas that the Israeli army ordered residents to evacuate before the start of its ground operation on Monday evening. 

The Israeli army asked the displaced to go towards an “expanded humanitarian area” extending from the nearby Mawasi to the city of Khan Yunis and the town of Deir al-Balah in the centre of the country. She said they would find field hospitals, tents, and additional aid supplies. But Palestinians and UN officials said the camp consists of overcrowded neighbourhoods that lack essential services or have been reduced to rubble by recent fighting. 

Anderson said, “The challenge is security. Combat operations are largely concentrated in the southeastern part of Rafah. There is a very large presence of the Israel Defense Forces, and there appears to be a very large presence of militants as well.”

In response, the Israeli military said it had taken “all practically feasible measures to mitigate harm to civilians, including aid convoys and workers. The IDF has never, and will never intentionally target, aid convoys and workers.”

An agreement reached in November saw Hamas release 105 hostages in exchange for a week-long ceasefire and about 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. Israel says 128 hostages are missing, and 36 of them are believed to be dead.