Palestinians in Rafah, Israel: a warning to Israel against a military offensive and its implication for the security of the Gaza Strip
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Some of the more than 1 million Palestinians displaced in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah are weighing the risks of whether to stay or flee as concerns grow of a military offensive there that Israel says is necessary for its war aims.
There is no publicly announced time frame for an attack on Rafah, despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approving the military’s plan last month.
The Israeli Ministry of Defense said this month they would purchase 40,000 tents to house displaced Palestinians from Rafah. With a capacity of up to 12 people in each, the tents could, in theory, house up to 480,000 Palestinians — about a third of the number of people thought to be sheltering in Rafah.
When negotiating with Hamas for a cease-fire, Israel had used threats of an invasion, but those talks have not been able to take place as Israel insists it must take Rafah.
Like many people in Rafah, he’s sheltering in a crowded apartment with other families. There are babies, elderly and ill people among them, he said. The idea of moving to a tent is painful for him because his wife is breastfeeding their youngest child and they need privacy. “The prospect of an offensive is scary for us,” he said.
There is growing worry in Rafah of an impending assault, because of the ongoing talks that are at an impasse. There’s a “deep anxiety prevailing in the south about the possible, looming, upcoming military offensive, which seems to be back on the table,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. relief agency for Palestinians, said this week.
A senior Egyptian official told NPR that Israeli intelligence officials have indicated five areas in Rafah where they say tunnels and militant hideouts are present. The official spoke about the sensitive nature of the discussions. The official disputed Israeli claims of tunnels in some of those areas.
“Hamas should know that when the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] goes into Rafah, it would do best to raise its hands in surrender. A brigadier from Israeli said the Rafah won’t be today. The city of Israel will be free of weapons and hostages, Gen. Itzik Cohen told Kan on Tuesday.
What to Know About a Possible Israeli Military Offensive in Rafah? The American Middle East Special Envoy David Satterfield
Several officials with knowledge of the discussions said that they were worried about a high death toll among Palestinian civilians as Israel targets areas with suspected tunnels.
David Satterfield, the US special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, said that the U.S. has pressed Israel to look at other ways to deal with a Hamas military presence in Rafah.
“We think there are other ways to deal with this. And if there is not a credible, executable humanitarian plan, then we cannot support a ground operation,” Satterfield told reporters Tuesday.
For its part, Egypt issued a statement this week denying “any dealings with Israel” regarding Rafah, and it reiterated its strong opposition to an offensive in Gaza along Egypt’s border, saying it “will lead to massacres, massive human losses, and widespread destruction.”
Humanitarian groups have bases in Rafah, which has been a key hub for the war. Most wounded Palestinians can’t afford visas to leave, so it’s their only other exit point. It’s also how much of Gaza’s humanitarian aid enters.
Like most major aid groups, the Norwegian Refugee Council does not currently have set plans to evacuate, said Hadid. In case of an offensive, she said, they would hope to stay to support the displaced population as much as possible and as safe as possible.
Several humanitarian organizations had already suspended operations in Gaza this month after an Israeli airstrike on a World Central Kitchen aid convoy killed seven of the organization’s workers.
A majority of organizations working in Rafah have contingency plans for an evacuation. The plans cannot be fully effective if there is less credible information from Israel, according to Joseph Kelly, the director of the Association of International Development Agencies.
“To the best of their ability, they’re stockpiling aid. Some locations are being looked at. There are areas north of Rafah where there’s some level of structural integrity to serve people that will eventually be pushed there.
COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for Palestinian affairs, has said it will notify aid groups “in a reasonable amount of time,” Kelly said, but the agency has not specified how soon that warning will come.
Source: What to know about a possible Israeli military offensive in Rafah
The Gaza Strip, a “Hell Fire” for Palestinians During March 21 Israeli Bombings of the Al-Shifa Hospital
In March, a targeted raid on Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital killed 200 militants, according to Israel’s military, which hailed the raid as a model. Hundreds of bodies of both civilians and soldiers are still being recovered in the city compared with Rafah, which is a much larger town, according to Palestinian civil defense.
It’s unsafe for civilians in Rafah. Over the past month, Israeli jets have intensified their bombing. According to Yousef Ibrahim, who works for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and compiles data from hospitals about strikes on his city, more than 200 people have been killed in the strikes on Rafah since March 21.
When they tell us to go to any location, we will go but only if we have a place to live and a source of water and food,” he says.
Al-Sayyed says people’s patience has run out. He said people could try to go back to their homes in Gaza City, if they were able to, or they could try to climb the border fence with Egypt.
Reporting by Becky Sullivan in Tel Aviv, Israel; Aya Batrawy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Anas Baba in Rafah, Gaza Strip; and Jane Arraf in Amman, Jordan. Additional reporting came from Itay and Itay’s house in Tel Aviv; the home of Ahmed Abuhamda in Cairo; and the office of the Secretary of State in Washington.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — As the temperatures soared over 100 degrees, Ayash’s tent became unbearable, he said, and it was like “hell fire.”
While other families were taking shelter in a large house, Ayash and his family were living in a small tent in the middle of the desert.
The tent Ayash built was meant for the winter of Gaza, with its walls made of blankets and cloth. To keep him and his family dry, he had lined the tent walls with plastic, the sheets held in place by wooden boards nailed together.
In this week’s heat, he said, wiping the sweat from his brow, it was even hotter inside the tent than outside. “The kids are falling apart. They can’t stay in the tents. “We want to remove the nylon from it, God willing.”
By Friday, the two-day heat wave had broken, and temperatures had returned to the 70s. But for Palestinians and aid workers alike, the high heat served as a preview of a summer to come — during which the punishing heat will weigh daily on every facet of what has become normal life in the besieged Gaza Strip.
“With the hot summer and with high temperature, this is creating an atmosphere for all kinds of germs and pollution. The main driver for waterborne diseases and airborne disease in the Palestinian territories is being caused by contaminated water, according to the director-general of the Palestinian Hydrology Group.
A worker with the global relief group toldNPR that at least one Palestinian woman has died due to the heat. Lara al-Sayigh, 18, had received word that she would be allowed to exit Gaza, said Mahmoud Khwaider, the aid worker and al-Sayigh’s neighbor. But she passed out from the heat and died before she could reach the border station at Rafah, Khwaider said.
The Gaza Strip: A displaced population that hasn’t left his home since October 7, according to a UNRWA spokesman
At a field hospital Thursday, a doctor ran clean water over the faces of two wailing young girls, their eyes burning from lice medication that had run from their scalps down into their eyes due to heat and sweat.
More than a million Palestinians have taken shelter here, the United Nations says, as Israel’s punishing military campaign forced people to flee from their homes further north.
“We didn’t expect things to reach a stage where we sit until May and June, and so on,” said Sharif Mazen Abu Odeh, who left his home in Beit Hanoun, a city in Gaza’s northeasternmost corner, shortly after Oct. 7, and didn’t anticipate being displaced this long.
Most of the population of Gaza has been displaced because of the Israeli campaign of airstrikes and ground operations. Gaza health officials say more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in less than a month.
Many left their homes with barely more than what they were wearing, let alone a full complement of winter and summer clothes. Most have been displaced multiple times, including Abu Odeh, who said he has moved four times since October.
“May God send down a little mercy from himself to cool the weather,” Abu Odeh said. “I don’t believe anyone other than the residents of the Gaza Strip — no one in the world — is living the life we are currently suffering from.”
Among aid workers, some were able to start their work before dawn in order to wrap up by the time the heat peaked in the mid-afternoon. But others worked through the heat, like those operating the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings, where lifesaving aid enters Gaza daily.
“Everybody’s a little slower. Scott Anderson, UNRWA’s deputy director of operations in Gaza, said that they needed to take more breaks and drink more water. “It does impact everything to do with manual labor, because it’s so hot and there’s not anywhere, really, to seek shade.”
UNRWA said it will look into opening the crossing earlier in the day in order to make it easier to take a safety break during the afternoon.
Source: A 100-degree heat wave in Gaza offers a sweltering glimpse of a tough summer to come
The water truck in Zakaria, the Mediterranean Sea, where families and children gather to bathe in the shade of spigots and tents
At a water truck, small children gathered directly underneath the spigots and danced in the drops that spilled as adults above them filled up their jugs. Women, in the privacy of their shelters, removed their hijabs to dip them in water before putting them on again. Along the rows of tents, people relaxed in what little shade they could find, hoping for a breeze.
There were thousands of people who came to the Mediterranean Sea to escape the sun. One of them, a five-year-old boy named Zakaria, told NPR that his swim in the ocean made him happy.
He said it would be worse in the summer. “We are not sure what to do with our families and our children.” We don’t know how to face this heat,” Haitham said. “We are terrified.”