Gaza: Israel extends military offensive in Rafah, sending at least 110,000 people fleeing

Israel has extended its military offensive in Rafah, with tanks capturing the main road dividing the eastern and western halves of the Gaza city on Friday. The move has effectively encircled the entire eastern side of the city.

The development came after Israel’s war cabinet and wider security cabinet voted unanimously to approve a “measured expansion” the Rafah operation, despite the threat by US president Joe Biden to withhold weapons from Israel if it launches a major invasion on the city in southern Gaza.

Rafah residents described almost constant explosions and gunfire east and northeast of the city on Friday, with intense fighting taking place between Israeli forces and militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Hamas said it ambushed Israeli tanks near a mosque in the east of the city, a sign the Israelis had penetrated several kilometres to the outskirts of the built-up area.

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“It is not safe, all of Rafah isn’t safe as tank shells landed everywhere since yesterday,” Abu Hassan, a resident of Tel al-Sultan refugee camp told Reuters. “The army is targeting all of Rafah, not only the east, with tank shells and air strikes,” he said.

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Unrwa, the United Nations refugee agency, says 110,000 people have already fled Rafah – the Israeli military has put the number closer to 150,000. Israel ordered civilians out of the eastern outskirts of Rafah earlier this week, telling them to move to the al-Mawasi “humanitarian area” along the Mediterranean coast. Some one million Palestinians, who fled other parts of the enclave during the war, remain in the city itself, and have not been told to evacuate yet.

The Rafah crossing to Egypt – seized by Israeli troops on Monday – remains closed. As a result, United Nations aid agencies have warned that dwindling food and fuel stocks could force aid operations to end within days

“For five days, no fuel and virtually no humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip, and we are scraping the bottom of the barrel,” said the Unicef senior emergency co-ordinator in the Gaza Strip, Hamish Young.

“This is already a huge issue for the population and for all humanitarian actors, but in a matter of days, if not corrected, the lack of fuel could grind humanitarian operations to a halt,” he said.

Fighting is also continuing in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, which Israeli troops re-entered earlier this week for the third time since the start of the war. Four Israeli soldiers were killed in an explosion in Zeitoun on Friday.

Palestinian sources in Gaza said Hamas and other militant factions intend to step up their operations against Israeli soldiers in northern Gaza and Gaza City in the coming days. The aim, they said, is to send a message to Israel that militants are still active in the northern Gaza Strip after seven months of fighting, and that a Rafah offensive will not end the war.

Hamas said efforts to agree to a ceasefire were back at square one after Israel effectively rejected a proposal by international mediators. Hamas said in a statement it would hold consultations with Palestinian factions to review its strategy for negotiations. Ceasefire talks in Cairo broke up on Thursday with no agreement to halt the fighting and release hostages.

Indirect diplomacy has failed to end a war that health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza say has killed almost 35,000 people since the October 7th attack, when some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and 253 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

Hamas had said it agreed at the start of the week to a proposal submitted by Qatari and Egyptian mediators that had previously been accepted by Israel. Israel said the Hamas proposal contained elements it cannot accept.

Five rockets were fired from Gaza towards Beersheba, the biggest city in southern Israel, on Friday and debris from an interception fell on a children’s playground.

Meanwhile, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has given his first public comments on what a postwar Gaza arrangement may look like. “There will probably have to be a civilian government ... with Gazans that are not committed to our destruction. Possibly, I think, with the aid of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and other countries who want stability and peace,” he said in an interview on the Dr Phil television talkshow in the US.

Ireland, Spain and other European Union member countries plan to recognise a Palestinian state on May 21st, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said on Friday.