Israel says it is poised to attack Rafah

JERUSALEM: Israel’s military is poised to evacuate Palestinian civilians from Rafah and assault Hamas hold-outs in the southern Gaza Strip city, a senior Israeli defence official said on Wednesday, despite international warnings of humanitarian catastrophe.

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said Israel was “moving ahead” with a ground operation, but gave no timeline. The defence official said Israel’s Defence Ministry had bought 40,000 tents, each with the capacity for 10 to 12 people, to house Palestinians relocated from Rafah in advance of an assault. Video circulating online appeared to show rows of square white tents going up in Khan Younis, a city some 5 km (3 miles) from Rafah. Reuters could not verify the video but reviewed images from satellite company Maxar Technologies which showed tent camps on Khan Younis land that had been vacant weeks ago. The defence official, who requested anonymity, told Reuters that the military could go into action immediately but was awaiting a green light from Netanyahu.

Rafah, which abuts the Egyptian border, is sheltering more than a million Palestinians who fled the half-year-old Israeli offensive through the rest of Gaza, and say the prospect of fleeing yet again is terrifying.

Israel, says Rafah is home to four Hamas combat battalions reinforced by thousands of retreating fighters, and it must defeat them to achieve victory. But Israel’s closest ally Washington has called on it to set aside plans for an assault, and says Israel can combat Hamas fighters there by other means.” We could not support a Rafah ground operation without an appropriate, credible, executable humanitarian plan precisely because of the complications for delivery of assistance,” David Satterfield, U.S. special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issued, told reporters on Tuesday.

Israel has withdrawn most of its ground troops from southern Gaza this month but kept up air strikes and conducted raids into areas its troops abandoned. Efforts by the United States, Egypt and Qatar to broker an extended ceasefire in time to head off an assault on Rafah have so far failed. Gaza medical officials say than 34,000 people have been killed in Israel’s military campaign, with thousands more bodies feared buried under rubble.

U.S. officials have been in touch with Israeli counterparts about deeply disturbing reports of mass graves being found in Gaza, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday.

“Those reports were deeply disturbing,” Sullivan said at a news briefing. “We have been in touch at multiple levels with the Israeli government. We want answers. We want to understand exactly what happened.”

Meanwhile, some Palestinian civilians were fleeing their homes in northern Gaza just weeks after returning because of an Israeli bombardment which they said was as intense as those at the start of the war. Much of the shelling was focused for a second day on Beit Lahiya on the northern edge of Gaza, where the Israeli military gave evacuation orders to four neighbourhoods on Tuesday, warning they were in a “dangerous combat zone”.

In the past 24 hours, Israeli strikes have killed at least 79 Palestinians and wounded 86, the Gaza Health Ministry said. Residents in northern Gaza and suburbs of Gaza City reported heavy shelling.

Israel said its operations in Beit Lahiya targeted areas from where the armed wing of Hamas-aligned Islamic Jihad had fired rockets at two Israeli border settlements on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, residents also reported shelling in central Gaza around Al-Nuseirat and Khan Younis, a city in the south from where troops withdrew earlier this month.

In one incident, Al-Nuseirat residents said an army helicopter landed near the camp and engaged in gun battles with fighters. The area then came under heavy tank fire. The Israeli military said artillery and fighter jet strikes had hit around 40 targets in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, with Hezbollah firing dozens of rockets at an Israeli border village.

A Hezbollah official dismissed the assertion as “completely worthless” and aimed only to boost Israeli morale.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah fired Katyusha rockets on the community of Shomera in response to Israeli strikes on Lebanese villages. Meanwhile, U.S. Gaza aid envoy David Satterfield is set to step down shortly and will be replaced by former senior United Nations official Lise Grande. —Reuters