Netanyahu orders his forces to “act in Rafah”

Tel Aviv/Washington/Geneva: After Israel’s War Cabinet last night outrightly rejected Hamas’s terms for a ceasefire in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directed the Israeli Defence Forces to “act” in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza. Following his directive, the IDF raised Israeli flags at the Rafah Crossing and took down the Hamas flags. Overnight, as the United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner Volker Türk stated, at least 26 Palestinians in Rafah were reportedly killed, mostly children and women, while Israeli warplanes pounded targets in Rafah.

Netanyahu today said, “The entry into Rafah serves two of the main objectives of the war: Returning our hostages and eliminating Hamas”.

A rocket attack on Sunday, May 5, 2024, by the armed wing of Hamas, which killed four Israeli soldiers near the Kerem Shalom border crossing, appears an excuse for Israel to eliminate the group’s presence in Rafah.

Earlier, Hamas agreed to a proposal that was put together by Egypt and Qatar, but reports from Israel suggested that was not acceptable to Tel Aviv as the fresh proposals were “softer than the initial framework that was in the works last week”.

On May 6, Israel’s War Cabinet unanimously decided Israel would continue its operation in Rafah, to apply military pressure on Hamas to advance the release of the hostages and achieve the “other objectives of the war”. According to the War Cabinet, the Hamas proposal was “far from meeting Israel’s core demands”. It decided to dispatch a ranking delegation to Egypt to maximize the possibility of reaching an agreement on terms acceptable to Israel and Netanyahu instructed the ranking delegation to continue to insist on the necessary conditions for the release of the hostages and strongly insist on the demands that are essential for ensuring the security of Israel.

“We are continuing the war on Hamas”, Netanyahu declared today overlooking the warning by his closest ally, the United States of America, that Washington does not support Israel launching a full-scale military operation in Rafah.

He described the taking of the Rafah Crossing today as a “very important step, an important step on the way to destroying Hamas’ remaining military capabilities, including the elimination of the four terrorist battalions in Rafah, and an important step to damaging Hamas’s governing capabilities, because as of this morning, we have denied Hamas the crossing that was vital to establishing its terrorist regime in the Strip”.

The US has warned that a military operation in Rafah right now would dramatically increase the suffering of the Palestinian people, and would lead to an increase in loss of civilian life. Crucially, it would dramatically disrupt the delivery of humanitarian assistance, the great majority of which is coming through Kerem Shalom or Rafah and is being distributed inside the Rafah area.

“If you think about what it would do when you have people moving north to places where internal distribution lines are not currently set up and you’re going to have to try to re-establish those in the middle of the conflict in Rafah, we think that would be very difficult, if not impossible, to do,” the US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said in Washington.

The US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken made this clear in his conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu and other members of the Israeli Government last week – that he had not seen a humanitarian plan “that is credible and that is implementable”.

Earlier, Israel had ordered Palestinians to evacuate parts of Rafah ahead of an anticipated new offensive and even moved ahead to closing Al Jazeera, accusing the Qatar-headquartered news channel of incitement. The move was immediately condemned by the rights groups. “Forcibly relocating hundreds of thousands from Rafah to areas which have already been flattened and where there is little shelter and virtually no access to humanitarian assistance necessary for their survival is inconceivable. It will only expose them to more danger and misery,” Türk stated in Geneva. Earlier, the aid groups had warned that Israel’s military incursion would spell doom for 1.2 million people in Rafah. Palestinians are fleeing Rafah, but there is no location outside of Rafah with the infrastructure and resources to host the mass displacement of over one million people, Türk pointed out.

Incidentally, the US had put certain proposals on the table to the Israeli Government that the US thought would be a much more limited, much more targeted, much more effective way of achieving their legitimate military objectives, which is taking on the Hamas battalions that are remaining in Rafah.

However, as Miller conceded, “Those look very different than the types of operations that we have seen proposed publicly by the Israeli Government…”.

Netanyahu today accused the Hamas proposal, which he claimed was very far from Israel’s core demands, and was “designed to torpedo the entry of our forces into Rafah”. He went on to claim, “We have already proven, in the previous release of hostages, that military pressure on Hamas is an essential condition for the return of our hostages”.

The Israeli Prime Minister asserted, “Israel will not allow Hamas to restore its regime of evil in the [Gaza] Strip. Israel will not allow it to rebuild its military capabilities in order to continue striving for our destruction. Israel cannot accept a proposal that endangers the security of our citizens and the future of our state”.

– global bihari bureau