Benjamin Netanyahu appears determined to push ahead with a ground offensive against Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah but has claimed Israel will provide safe passage to the 1.3 million displaced Palestinians sheltering there.
Despite mounting warnings from aid agencies and the international community that an assault on Rafah would be a catastrophe, Netanyahu has reiterated his intention to extend Israel’s military operation against Hamas. Hamas stated that a new advance into Rafah would “blow up” ongoing negotiations to return hostages in return for a ceasefire.
“We’re going to do it,” Israel’s prime minister told ABC News in an interview aired on Sunday. “We’re going to get the remaining Hamas terrorist battalions in Rafah, which is the last bastion, but we’re going to do it.”
He added: “We’re going to do it while providing safe passage for the civilian population so they can leave.”
As Israeli forces have expanded ground operations steadily southwards in their war against Hamas over the past four months, Rafah has become the last refuge for more than half of the strip’s population of 2.3 million.
It remains unclear where the large number of people pressed up against the border with Egypt in overcrowded makeshift tent camps can go. When asked, Netanyahu said Israel was “working out a detailed plan”.
He said: “We’re not cavalier about this. This is part of our war effort to get civilians out of harm’s way. It’s part of Hamas’s effort to keep them in harm’s way.”
The prime minister has not provided details or a timeline on a ground invasion in Rafah, which Israel previously designated as a safe zone.
The southern city has become the last major population centre in Gaza that troops have yet to enter, even as it is bombarded by airstrikes almost daily. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they had killed two “senior Hamas operatives” in a strike on Rafah on Saturday.
Israel’s war in Gaza, now in its fifth month, was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on 7 October in which 1,200 people were killed and a further 250 abducted as bargaining chips.
The Gaza health ministry said on Sunday that 28,176 Palestinians had been killed and 67,784 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October. It said 112 Palestinians had been killed and 173 injured in the past 24 hours.
Netanyahu’s announcement on Friday that he had instructed the IDF and defence ministry to draw up plans for troops to enter Rafah and evacuate civilians prompted international concern.
The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, posted on X on Saturday: “The people in Gaza cannot disappear into thin air.”
The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said an assault on Rafah would lead to “unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe and grave tensions with Egypt”.
The Egyptian foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, said any ground offensive would have “disastrous consequences”, while Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry warned of “very serious repercussions of storming and targeting” Rafah and called for an urgent meeting of the UN security council.
The UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, said he was “deeply concerned” about the prospective offensive, adding: “The priority must be an immediate pause in the fighting to get aid in and hostages out.”
The British opposition Labour leader, Keir Starmer, said: “There are over 1.4 million displaced Palestinians in Rafah and it is the gateway to aid for Gaza – an Israeli offensive there would be catastrophic. The fighting must stop now. We need a sustainable ceasefire.”
Israel’s plans for Rafah have also drawn unusually fierce criticism from the US, its most important ally, after days of increasing friction between Netanyahu and the Biden administration.
In a conversation with Netanyahu on Sunday, the US president stressed that a military operation in Rafah “should not proceed without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for” the people sheltering there, the White House said.
Netanyahu pushed back against the concerns about entering Rafah in the interview for ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, saying: “Those who say that under no circumstances should we enter Rafah are basically saying ‘lose the war, keep Hamas there’.”
He cast doubt on the accuracy of the Palestinian death toll, describing the figures produced by health authorities in Gaza as “Hamas statistics” and claiming: “It’s only been one civilian that’s been killed for one Hamas terrorist in Gaza.”
In an address to his government ministers on Sunday, Netanyahu restated that the IDF must retain security control of Gaza and the West Bank.
He said: “We want, in effect, to bring about the demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip. This requires our security control and our comprehensive security responsibility over all territory west of the Jordan River, including the Gaza Strip. There is no alternative to this in the foreseeable future.”
In Gaza City, Israel’s military claimed that its troops had uncovered a Hamas tunnel under the evacuated headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner general, said the agency had not operated from the compound since 12 October when staff evacuated it under instruction from Israeli forces.
The agency is already facing accusations that a dozen staff members were involved in the 7 October attacks.
Although the war retains strong public support in Israel, protesters took to the streets of Tel Aviv on Saturday night to demand that the hostages be released, that Netanyahu step down and that fresh elections be called.
Some families of the remaining 130 or so hostages stepped out and accused the government of abandoning their loved ones.
A senior Hamas leader warned on Sunday that any Israeli ground offensive in Rafah would “blow up” hostage exchange negotiations, the Hamas-run Aqsa Television channel reported, according to Reuters.
“Any attack by the occupation army on the city of Rafah would undermine the exchange negotiations,” a Hamas leader told Agence France-Presse.
The militant group’s armed wing, al-Qassam Brigades, claimed that Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip over the past 96 hours had killed two Israeli hostages and injured eight others.
“Their conditions are becoming more dangerous in light of the inability to provide them with appropriate treatment. [Israel] bears full responsibility for the lives of those injured in light of their continued bombing,” the group said in a statement on Telegram.
