People flee the eastern parts of Rafah, after the Israeli military began evacuating Palestinian civilians ahead of a threatened assault on the southern Gazan city on May 6.Doaa al Baz/Reuters
Israel launched a long-threatened invasion of Rafah, a city in southern Gaza crowded with displaced people living in tents, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government rejected the terms of a ceasefire accepted by the Hamas leadership on Monday.
Early in the day, the Israeli military used text messages, as well as leaflets dropped on the city, to warn residents of the eastern part of Rafah to leave those areas and move to what Israel called an “expanded humanitarian zone” 20 kilometres away. Images and videos soon emerged online showing long lines of Palestinians travelling – many walking, some crowded onto carts pulled by donkeys – away from a city that had been declared a safe zone.
Hours after Israel sent the evacuation warning, Ismail Haniyeh, the Qatar-based political leader of Hamas, said that on Monday he had accepted a ceasefire brokered by Egypt and Qatar.
Any deal would involve the release of some of the 100 Israelis that Hamas has been holding hostage in Gaza since Oct. 7, but Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that the Rafah assault will continue, in parallel with new negotiations.
“Israel’s war cabinet unanimously decided that Israel will continue the operation in Rafah so as to exert military pressure on Hamas and advance the release of our hostages and the other war goals,” the Hebrew-language statement reads. “Although Hamas’ proposal is far from Israel’s basic requirements, Israel will send a delegation of mediators to exhaust the possibility of reaching an agreement under conditions acceptable to Israel.”
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the U.S. was reviewing the Hamas reply. “We continue to believe a hostage deal is in the best interest of the Israeli people and the Palestinian people,” he said.
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Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister, posted on social media that “Hamas’ exercises and games have only one answer: an immediate order to occupy Rafah!” However, Mr. Ben-Gvir is not a member of the three-man war cabinet – made up of Mr. Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and former army chief-of-staff Benny Gantz – that will ultimately decide what Israel does next.
News that Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire was met by cheers in the sprawling tent camps around Rafah, where hope spread that the expected Israeli assault on the city had been averted.
Among those who fled Rafah on Monday was Umm Ahmed Al-Khawalda, a 57-year-old who said it was the fourth time she had been displaced since the start of the war. “People don’t know what will be the next step,” she said by telephone, adding that she and her family had headed north toward the centre of Gaza as soon as they saw the leaflets. “We are just waiting for the war to stop and to return to our homes, if they are not destroyed.”
Israel says entering Rafah – which it calls the last Hamas stronghold, and the likely location of many of the hostages – is essential. In a post on its official account on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Israeli military vowed to “continue pursuing Hamas everywhere in Gaza until all the hostages that they’re holding in captivity are back home.”
Humanitarian organizations reacted to the evacuation order with alarm. Rafah is currently home to more than one million Palestinians, including hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people who fled the north and centre of Gaza early in the war. Many have been living for months in tents amid appalling conditions.
“The relocation orders issued by Israel today to thousands of Gazans, directing them to move to Al-Mawasi, are beyond alarming. The area is already overstretched and devoid of vital services,” said Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, referring to the name of the supposed safe zone that residents of eastern Rafah were directed to. “Rafah had become the last refuge for hundreds of thousands of families, deprived of any semblance of safety. With nowhere else to go, they are facing the threat of prolonged displacement and death.”
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On Sunday, the head of the World Food Programme, Cindy McCain, said there is now a “full-blown famine” in the north of the Gaza Strip – which is under Israeli military control – and that it is spreading to the south.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement that the order to evacuate from parts of Rafah was “inhumane.”
Diplomatic condemnation of the move was also loud and swift. “Israel’s evacuation orders to civilians in Rafah portend the worst: more war and famine. It is unacceptable,” said the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell Fontelles.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who has repeatedly warned Israel against an assault on Rafah, held a phone call with Mr. Netanyahu. “We continue to believe that a hostage deal is the best way to preserve the lives of the hostages, and avoid an invasion of Rafah,” the White House said in a statement.
On Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu appeared to signal that he would not be swayed by such external pressure. “If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone,” he said in a speech marking Holocaust Remembrance Day. “I say to the leaders of the world: No amount of pressure, no decision by any international forum will stop Israel from defending itself.”
Air strikes on Rafah began soon after the warning for residents to leave. In the evening, shortly after Mr. Netanyahu’s office announced that the offensive would go ahead, Palestinian media reported that tanks were seen on the eastern edge of the city. The Palestinian ministry of health reported that 26 people were killed over the previous 24 hours.
The Gazan Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its figures, says more than 34,000 people have died over seven months of war. Aid organizations estimate that almost 80 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million prewar residents have been driven from their homes, many of which have been destroyed. Israel invaded Gaza after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, which killed more than 1,100 Israelis and foreigners and saw more than 200 others taken as hostages into Gaza.
The decision to attack Rafah was announced one day after four Israeli soldiers were killed by Hamas rockets that struck a military staging area just outside Gaza. Hamas, which governed Gaza before Oct. 7, warned Monday that entering Rafah “will not be a picnic” for Israeli forces and that its armed wing was “fully prepared to defend our people.”
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Until the weekend, there had been rising hope that a truce could be reached. A Hamas official told Reuters that the proposal the group agreed to on Monday was a three-phase ceasefire that would include a prisoner swap – referring to some or all of the hostages, as well as the potential release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails – and the return of Gazans who have been displaced from their homes by seven months of fighting.
Each phase of the proposed deal would last six weeks. The second phase would reportedly include the approval of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops – conditions Mr. Netanyahu had previously refused to agree to.
The families of 30 of the hostages still being held in Rafah, together with six former hostages who were released from Hamas captivity during a week-long November ceasefire, published a letter addressed to the Israeli cabinet on Monday. In it, they accused Mr. Netanyahu – who was deeply unpopular in Israel even before Oct. 7 – of “abandoning the hostages to their deaths.” They demanded to know the full truth about why the ceasefire negotiations collapsed.
The families of some of the hostages were among a group of protesters who blocked a highway near Tel Aviv on Monday evening, demanding that a hostage deal be prioritized over a military operation in Rafah. Similar protests also broke out in the cities of Jerusalem, Haifa and Beersheba.
“Why aren’t you telling the Israeli public that they can allow themselves to stop the war in exchange for a ceasefire? And why did you support action in Rafah when it is clear that it endangers the hostages and distances the possibility of their return?” the letter to cabinet read, according to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. “Go public and tell the truth.”