Israel’s assault on Rafah and seizure of a key border crossing on Tuesday ignited international debate and condemnation, as some 1.4 million civilians sheltering in the southern Gaza city were caught in the crosshairs of a potential invasion.
Israel on Monday night began “targeted strikes” in eastern Rafah before taking control of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing, the only entry point between Gaza and Egypt and a crucial crossing for humanitarian assistance.
This came just hours after around 100,000 Palestinians in eastern Rafah were ordered to “evacuate immediately”, with Israeli bombs soon beginning to rain down on residential areas.
The US ally pressed ahead with the attack after claiming that the ceasefire terms agreed by Hamas on Monday were “far from” meeting its demands, promising instead to “exert military pressure on Hamas” in Rafah .
Biden administration officials insisted Tuesday that they believed Israeli assurances that the move was a limited operation aimed at thwarting Hamas’ ability to send weapons across the border to Rafah.
But other international leaders, including the head of the United Nations, said any attack on Rafah would be a humanitarian disaster and urged both sides to agree to a ceasefire immediately.
Here are the main takeaways from the situation.
Why Rafah is militarily important to Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu anointed Israel’s military operation in Rafah as a solution both to return the remaining hostages held in Gaza and to finally exterminate Hamas.
“The entry into Rafah serves two main war objectives: the return of our hostages and the elimination of Hamas,” Netanyahu said in a video on Tuesday, saying the Israeli military began operations overnight.
He added that “military pressure on Hamas is a necessary condition for the return of our hostages”, accusing Hamas’ agreement to the ceasefire proposal as “intended to torpedo the entry of our forces into Rafah. This did not happened.”
It is estimated that there are still 133 Israeli hostages in Gaza, but it is not known how many are alive or under Hamas control.
Israel demanded that 40 of the most vulnerable hostages – children, women, elderly and injured – be evacuated as part of the first phase of any ceasefire agreement. But Hamas negotiators have indicated they do not have enough people in those categories to reach that number.
Another obstacle to any agreement is the duration of a ceasefire. Hamas wants this pause to end the war, while Israel wants to stop its fighting just long enough to get the hostages before eliminating Hamas from Gaza.
Rafah is the pressure point in the chaos, with Israel war cabinet member Benny Gantz saying Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operations in the city “will continue and expand as necessary.”
Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday that his country’s advance into Gaza will continue until Hamas is destroyed in Rafah and throughout the territory, or until the last hostage returns.
At risk of pulling in Egypt
The Rafah invasion also threatens to draw Egypt into hostilities, a situation that would put even more pressure on an already volatile region.
Egypt, together with the United States and Qatar, worked for weeks on a proposed truce between Israel and Hamas that would guarantee the release of Israeli hostages.
The country has a unique interest in brokering such an agreement, as it shares a border with Gaza and hopes to prevent the flow of Palestinian refugees into its territory.
But Egypt’s Foreign Ministry condemned Israel on Tuesday for closing the Rafah border crossing, calling the move a “dangerous escalation.”
The action threatens “the lives of more than a million Palestinians who mainly depend on this crossing as the main lifeline of the Gaza Strip,” the ministry said, warning Israel not to threaten a potential ceasefire.
Egypt has also previously warned that any flow of Palestinian refugees into its country caused by Israel could nullify its decades-old Israel-Egypt peace treaty.
That agreement, signed in 1979, served as a crucial source of stability in the Middle East.
A worsening humanitarian crisis
Before a full-scale military invasion of Rafah, Israel ordered around 100,000 civilians living in parts of eastern Rafah to immediately evacuate to the coastal city of Al-Mawasi. But aid groups warned it was not an appropriate area to live in, and the UN human rights officer called the order “inhumane”.
“The people of Gaza continue to be hit by bombs, disease and even famine. And today, they have been told that they must relocate once again as Israeli military operations in Rafah intensify,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement. “This is inhumane.”
His colleague, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, warned on Monday that a ground invasion in Rafah would be “intolerable due to its devastating humanitarian consequences and its destabilizing impact on the region”.
The UN and humanitarian organizations in Gaza have warned that the territory has reached total famine due to an already severe lack of access to food and medical supplies.
On Tuesday, UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, warned that humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza could get much worse if they were disrupted by Israeli control of the Rafah border crossing.
“The continued disruption to the entry of aid and fuel supplies at the Rafah crossing will disrupt the critical humanitarian response across the Gaza Strip,” UNRWA said in the X.
The “catastrophic famine faced by people, especially in northern Gaza, will become much worse if these supply routes are disrupted,” the agency added.
International pressure increases
World leaders were quick to condemn Israel for its move to Rafah and its refusal to rule out a full-scale invasion there.
Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and several United Nations agencies have called Israel’s apparent plans a dangerous escalation.
Guterres called on Israel and Hamas to “show political courage and spare no effort to secure a deal now to stop the bloodshed, free the hostages and help stabilize a region that is still at risk of explosion.”
“Things are moving in the wrong direction,” he added.
In the West, the European Union’s top diplomat, foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, feared that an invasion of Rafah would “again cause many civilian casualties, whatever they say.”
“There are 600,000 children in Gaza. They will be pushed into so-called ‘safe zones’ [but] there are no safe zones in Gaza,” Borrell said on Tuesday before a meeting of ministers responsible for development cooperation.
The regional director of the World Health Organization, Hanan Balkhy, warned on X that Israel’s military operation had put the lives of 1.5 million people “in imminent danger”, calling for the border crossing to be “urgently reopened”.
And Amnesty International official Erika Guevara-Rosas said Operation Rafah was “a cruel and inhumane move that already illustrates the disastrous impact of such an operation on civilians.”
She called on all states to pressure Israel “to immediately suspend its ground operations in Rafah and ensure unrestricted access to humanitarian aid, in line with its obligations to prevent genocide.”
Even the United States has grown frustrated with Israel’s stance in recent months, suggesting last week that Washington might reevaluate its support for its ally if it did not do more to protect civilians and aid workers in Gaza.
That threat appeared to have been realized when reports emerged on Tuesday of a delay in the delivery of munitions to Israel, the first time the US has withheld lethal assistance to the country since the start of its war against Hamas in October.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
