Israeli airstrikes killed over a dozen people overnight and into Thursday in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Hamas’ cease-fire terms and vowed to expand the offensive into the southern Gaza town.
More than half of strip’s population has fled to Rafah, on the mostly sealed border with Egypt, which is also the main entry point for humanitarian aid. Egypt has warned that any ground operation there or mass displacement across the border would undermine its four-decade-old peace treaty with Israel.
The overnight strikes killed at least 13 people, including two women and five children, according to the Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies. At the scene of one of the strikes, residents used their cellphone flashlights as they dug through the rubble with pick-axes and their bare hands.
“I wish we could collect their whole bodies instead of just pieces,” said Mohammed Abu Habib, a neighbour who witnessed the strike.
Israel’s four-month-old air and ground offensive — among the most destructive in recent history — has killed over 27,000 Palestinians, driven most people from their homes and pushed a quarter of the population toward starvation. Netanyahu has said the offensive will continue and expand until “total victory” over Hamas, which started the war by launching a wide-ranging attack into southern Israel on Oct 7 in which militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 hostage. Israel has also vowed to bring back the over 100 captives still held by Hamas after most of the rest were freed during a cease-fire in November in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
But both of those goals appear increasingly elusive, as Hamas re-emerges in parts of northern Gaza, which was the first target of the offensive and suffered widespread destruction. Israel has only rescued one hostage, while Hamas says several have been killed in airstrikes or failed rescue missions.
ALARM GROWS AS ISRAEL EYES RAFAH
Netanyahu said preparations were underway to expand the offensive into Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of people who fled from other areas are crowded into squalid tent camps and overflowing UN-run shelters. The Palestinian death toll from four months of war has already reached 27,840, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its figures but says most of the dead have been women and children.
International aid organisations have warned that any major operation in Rafah would compound what is already a humanitarian catastrophe in the besieged coastal enclave.
“If they aren’t killed in the fighting, Palestinian children, women and men will be at risk of dying by starvation or disease.” said Bob Kitchen, of the International Rescue Committee. “There will no longer be a single safe’ area for Palestinians to go to.” Outside the hospital where bodies from the overnight strikes were brought, relatives wept as they said farewell to their loved ones. Warda Abu Warda said she felt helpless. “Where do we go after Rafah? Do we go to sea?” she asked.
GAPS REMAIN IN TALKS OVER CEASE-FIRE
The United States, Qatar and Egypt are trying to broker another cease-fire agreement to ensure the release the remaining hostages. But Hamas has demanded an end to the war, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants.
Netanyahu rejected those demands as “delusional” on Tuesday and said Israel would never agree to any deal that leaves Hamas in partial or full control of the territory it has ruled since 2007.
But visiting Secretary of State Antony Blinken said an agreement was still possible and that negotiations would continue, the latest sign of a growing divide between the two close allies on the way forward. A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Thursday for more negotiations.
Netanyahu is under mounting pressure from families of the hostages and the wider public to bring them home, even if it requires a deal with Hamas. At least one senior Israeli official has acknowledged that saving the captives and destroying Hamas might be incompatible.
Hamas is still holding over 130 hostages, but around 30 of them are believed to be dead, with the vast majority killed on Oct 7. The group is widely believed to be holding the captives in tunnels deep underground and using them as human shields for its top leaders.
Blinken ends latest Mideast mission
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken left the Middle East on Thursday with public divisions between the United States and Israel at perhaps their worst level since Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza began in October.
Wrapping up a four-nation Mideast trip - his fifth to the region since the conflict erupted - Blinken was returning to Washington after getting a virtual slap in the face from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said the war would continue until Israel is completely victorious and appeared to reject outright a response from Hamas to a proposed cease-fire plan. Relations between Israel and its main international ally, the United States, have been tense for months, but Netanyahu’s public dismissal of a plan the US says has merit, at least as a starting point for further negotiation, highlighted the divide.
Yet Blinken and other US officials said they remained optimistic that progress could be made on their main goals of improving humanitarian conditions for Palestinians civilians, securing the release of hostages held by Hamas, preparing for a post-conflict Gaza and preventing the war from spreading. Officials said Blinken’s optimism was based on his first four post-Oct 7 trips to the Middle East. None of those visits resulted in immediate visible successes, but they brought limited but significant improvements in the delivery of humanitarian aid and a weeklong cease-fire in November in which scores of hostages were released.
“Clearly there are things that Hamas sent back that are absolute non-starters,” Blinken said of the response the militant group delivered Tuesday to a cease-fire and hostage release proposal that was endorsed last month by Egypt, Qatar, the US and Israel itself.
“But, at the same time, we see space to continue to pursue an agreement,” Blinken said late Wednesday. “And these things are always negotiations. It’s not flipping a light switch. It’s not yes’ or no.’ There’s invariably back and forth.”
Shortly before Blinken spoke, though, Netanyahu took direct aim at the Hamas response, calling it “delusional” and vowing that Israel would fight on to achieve “absolute victory” over the militant group, no matter what.
Compounding Blinken’s dilemma, Netanyahu also appeared to dismiss concerns from the US and others about expanding Israel’s military operations in southern Gaza, particularly in Rafah, the area on the Egyptian border to which over a million Palestinians have fled. “On all of my previous visits here and pretty much every day in between, we have pressed Israel in concrete ways to strengthen civilian protection, to get more assistance to those who need it. And over the past four months, Israel has taken important steps to do just that,” he said. “And yet...the daily toll that its military operations continue to take on innocent civilians remains too high.”
Netanyahu also called for the dismantlement of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which is the main distributor of international assistance to Gaza, because of its alleged hostility toward Israel and allegations that a dozen of its employees took part in the Oct 7 Hamas attack that ignited the war. The US and other donor nations have suspended new assistance to UNRWA pending completion of a UN investigation into the allegations, but Blinken has nonetheless said the agency’s role is critical to getting desperately needed humanitarian supplies into Gaza.
Blinken appealed to Netanyahu and other Israelis still reeling from the Hamas attack not to allow vengeance to dictate their continued response.
Israelis were dehumanised in the most horrific way on October 7,” he said. “And the hostages have been dehumanized every day since. But that cannot be a license to dehumanise others.”
Blinken came to Israel just hours after the receipt of the Hamas counter-proposal to the framework cease-fire agreement put forward late last month. That proposal includes a three-phase plan to de-escalate the conflict.
In Qatar on Tuesday, both Qatar’s prime minister and Blinken said the proposal had promise as a starting point for further negotiation.
And Blinken talked up Saudi Arabia’s interest in normalising relations with Israel, provided the Gaza war ends and the Palestinians are given a clear, credible and time-bound pathway to an independent state.
“We remain determined as well to pursue a diplomatic path to a just and lasting peace, and security for all in the region, and notably for Israel,” Blinken said in Tel Aviv. However, Netanyahu is opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state and has said Israel will maintain open-ended security control over Gaza.