The image denotes determination and humiliation. Israeli tanks, with large flags, occupy the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, the only entrance and exit to Gaza that Israel did not control. Some soldiers replace the Palestinian insignia with those of the Hebrew State; Others film how the armored vehicles crush signs that welcome the enclave.
It is the staging of the first hours of Israel’s land advance on the east of Rafah, an incursion that threatens the already restricted delivery of humanitarian aid and further strains the rope of negotiations for a ceasefire.
The irruption of the tanks occurred under a rain of Israeli bombs on the night of Monday to Tuesday, and almost immediately after the Government of Beniamin Netanyahu rejected as insufficient an Egyptian-Qatari truce proposal accepted by Hamas. In this way, the Palestinians of Rafah went from cheering for the Islamist group’s response to terror due to explosions in the dark.
After the most intense barrage of attacks, the Gazans tried to measure the extent of the damage and went out to remove rubble in search of survivors. According to hospital records, at least 23 people – including six women and five children – were killed in the overnight Israeli bombardments, some crushed by concrete.
The Kuwaiti hospital was overwhelmed by the number of wounded, especially after the main sanatorium in Rafah, Al Najjar, was forced to evacuate because it was in the area threatened by Israel.
Mohamed Abu Amra told the Associated Press that an Israeli attack leveled their home while they slept, killing his wife, three brothers and his niece: “We saw fire devouring us. The house was turned upside down.” At the same time, and without ever being safe from the bombs, thousands of Gazans continued their exodus from eastern Rafah, where some 100,000 residents and displaced people were forced to “evacuate” by order of the Army.
The spokesman for the UN Humanitarian Affairs office, Jens Laerke, denounced that these transfer orders do not comply with international law because they do not allow enough time to prepare an evacuation or facilitate a safe route to a protected area with access to aid. “(Rafah) is full of unexploded ordnance and huge bombs lying in the street. It is not safe,” he criticized from Geneva, adding that “panic and desperation” have taken over the population.
United Nations agencies claim that the strip has now been virtually cut off from aid because Israel keeps the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings closed. The first is a vital passage for aid trucks and the only way out of Gaza for the sick, wounded and their companions. Yesterday, 140 Palestinians authorized to cross into Egypt were unable to do so due to the Israeli takeover. It is also a passage for volunteers from foreign missions, and for Gazans who pay huge sums of money to intermediaries to emigrate irregularly.
Under the vague claim that this border crossing was “being used for terrorist purposes” and without providing evidence, the Israeli army has blocked the access through which all fuel for trucks and generators entered, according to Laerke, leaving reserves of “about a day”: “If fuel does not arrive for an extended period, it would be a very effective way to take the humanitarian operation to the grave.”
Added to this is that the World Food Program claims to have between one and four days’ supplies for the southern and central areas of Gaza. Likewise, Kerem Shalom has been closed since Sunday, after a Hamas attack on a military base in the area killed four soldiers. Thus, Erez, in the north, is the only crossing enabled only for some supplies – which does not include fuel – which are impossible for them to reach Rafah because they must cross active combat zones. James Elder, spokesman for Unicef, warns that “Erez simply will not be enough” and that “if Rafah closes for an extended period of time, it is difficult to see how famine can be avoided.” They are warnings that recall the beginnings of the Israeli invasion of Gaza, which began after the Hamas attacks on October 7, and which enters its eighth month without a plan to end the suffering of civilians. The only relief, a ceasefire agreement, remains to be seen. In his first message since the troops entered Rafah, Netanyahu repeated that the proposal accepted on Monday by Hamas was “very far from Israel’s vital demands” and sought to “sabotage the entry of our forces” into southern Gaza.
However, The New York Times reported that, according to two officials with knowledge of the talks, the text had minor changes from the framework that had been previously agreed upon between Israel, the US, Egypt and Qatar. The new offer included three truce phases of 42 days each, at the end of which all Israeli hostages, alive and dead, would have been released in exchange for an undetermined number of Palestinian prisoners, including bodies held by Israel.
The text also maintained that both parties must reach an agreement for a “sustainable calm” during the second stage, a euphemism to avoid mentioning a permanent ceasefire, which Israel does not want to accept. But the definition also gives rise to different interpretations: Hamas sees it as the end of the war, and Israel does not. In this counterpoint, Israeli officials leaked to the press that the current incursion in Rafah is not the feared large-scale invasion and aims to pressure Hamas.
A view that is not shared by either the Islamists or Egypt, who believe that entering the overpopulated extreme south damages the talks. Dialogues that, however, Cairo resumed yesterday with delegations from Qatar, the US and Hamas. Israel sent a team of mid-ranking officials, promising that top diplomats will only travel when there is progress in the direction Netanyahu wants.
