Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that a date has been set for a ground offensive in Rafah, which Israel says is one of the last Hamas strongholds in Gaza.
Around 1.5 million Gazans are sheltering in the city, which has so far not experienced a large-scale Israeli ground assault.
Netanyahu did not say when the invasion would occur but reiterated that victory over Hamas fighters “requires entry into Rafah and the elimination of the terrorist battalions there.
“It will happen – there is a date,” he said in a video statement.
Body copy (news): He was speaking as talks in Cairo over a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal appeared to be gathering momentum.
The US said it still opposed a major Israeli assault on Rafah. “The US has not been briefed on a date for Israel’s invasion of Rafah,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, after Netanyahu said that a date has been set.
Miller told reporters at a regular news briefing that Washington does not want to see a full scale invasion of Rafah, Gaza’s last refuge for displaced Palestinians, in any event.
With some 1.5 million Palestinians sheltering in Rafah, “we have made clear to Israel that we think a full-scale military invasion of Rafah would have an enormously harmful effect on those civilians and that it would ultimately hurt Israel security,” Miller said.
Rafah is the last refuge for Palestinian civilians displaced by relentless Israeli bombardments that have flattened their home neighbourhoods. It is also the last significant redoubt of Hamas combat units, Israel says.
More than one million people are crammed into the southern city in desperate conditions, short of food, water and shelter, and foreign governments and organisations have urged Israel against storming Rafah for fears of a bloodbath.
Hundreds of residents who had been living in tents in Rafah ventured back to their devastated home areas yesterday following the Israeli pullback. Some rode on donkey carts, rickshaws and open-deck vehicles while some just walked.
“It is a shock, a shock ... the destruction is unbearable,” said resident Mohammed Abou Diab. “I am going to my house and I know that it is destroyed. I am going to remove the rubble to get a shirt out,” he added.
Palestinian medical officials said their teams had recovered more than 80 bodies from areas where the soldiers operated in the past months.
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