2024-02-26 11:04:26
While a balanced optimism was perceptible at the end of the meeting in Paris last weekend, then Monday February 26 in Qatar, around a possible truce agreement between Israel and Hamas, the Hebrew State continues to pose an increasingly concrete threat to the inhabitants of Rafah. Benyamin Netanyahu decouples diplomatic negotiations from military aims: the Israeli Prime Minister reiterated on Sunday on the American channel CBS that a truce would only « retarder » the offensive on the southernmost town of the Gazan enclave.
There, 1.5 million people, mainly refugees who have arrived in waves since the start of the Israeli ground offensive on October 13, survive in appalling conditions. Bombings have already taken place in recent days in this area backed by Egypt.
The head of the Israeli government presents Rafah as the “last bastion” of Hamas, to be dismantled before the “total victory” that he considers “a few weeks”. On Sunday, February 25, his office indicated that the army had “presented to the war cabinet a plan for the evacuation of populations from combat zones in the Gaza Strip, as well as the plan for future operations”.
No details have been provided publicly, nor even to the steadfast American ally who condemns this option. “We have made it clear that we do not believe that an operation, a major military operation, should take place in Rafah unless there is a clear and achievable plan to protect civilians, bring them to safety, feed, clothe and house them – and we have seen no such plan,” assured the American national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, on Sunday.
Humanitarian aid in danger
The scenario of an Israeli ground offensive on Rafah has been feared for weeks. Beyond the bellicose Israeli declarations, the impressive works launched on the Egyptian side of the border over 20 km2 also fuel fears of a possible evacuation of Gazan civilians. Is it a “buffer zone”, during the offensive, or a more permanent refugee camp?
If Israel officially rules out any evacuation of populations to Egypt, the hypothesis is worrying. Especially since in his first plan for the “post-war”, submitted Thursday to the security cabinet, Benjamin Netanyahu proposes that Israel be present on the border between the enclave and Egypt and cooperate with Cairo and Washington to prevent smuggling attempts, particularly at this Rafah crossing point.
Beyond the fate of civilians crowded together and without prospects at the border, a generalized offensive on Rafah “would sound the death knell” humanitarian aid programs, already “totally insufficient” in Gaza, as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday. The crowded town, very close to the closed Egyptian border, is the main entry point for humanitarian aid into the enclave.
“To impose in defiance of international law a massive displacement of population under bombs, without a health system, with hunger, thirst and without proportionate aid, is the guarantee of an exponential mortality of civilians treated less well than cattle”, warned the vice-president of Doctors of the World on Monday on the social network.
Fewer humanitarian aid trucks
Israel must present this Monday a progress report on its compliance with the measures decreed by the International Court of Justice. The high UN court ordered him, on January 26, to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance”and report on its compliance with specific measures “within one month”.
Fewer trucks entered Gaza and fewer aid missions were allowed to reach northern Gaza in the weeks following the ICJ ruling, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). than in the weeks preceding it.
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