Israeli warplanes pounded targets in the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Monday as the military told about 110,000 people sheltering there to evacuate. Many people began to leave, fearing that Israel was moving ahead with its long-planned invasion of Rafah, despite stiff international pressure.
The Israeli military began dropping leaflets in eastern Rafah telling people to move to what it called a humanitarian zone to the north, and said it would also notify people by text messages, phone calls and broadcasts in Arabic, and on Monday night, the Israeli military carried out another round of what it called “targeted strikes” in Rafah against Hamas.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement late on Monday that the war cabinet had decided unanimously to “continue with its action in Rafah in order to exert military pressure on Hamas,” though it was not clear if that meant the latest airstrikes or something broader. A military spokesman would not say when troops might enter the crowded city, but described the evacuation as part of Israel’s plans to dismantle Hamas and to free hostages taken on Oct. 7.
Hours after the evacuation order, the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, issued a statement that the group had accepted a new cease-fire proposal from Qatar and Egypt, which have acted as intermediaries in peace talks. The group and Israeli officials said it was not referring to the proposal that Israel recently agreed to, leaving the conflict unresolved.
John F. Kirby, a White House national security spokesman, declined to comment on the Hamas response, saying the United States was reviewing it. Israeli officials said they, too, would review the proposal, but the prime minister’s office said it did not meet Israel’s demands.
On Sunday, the talks appeared to reach an impasse, with Israel and Hamas still sharply at odds over the duration of any truce, and each side blaming the other for the failure to strike a deal. Hamas wants a permanent cease-fire whileMr. Netanyahu of Israel has expressed openness to only a temporary halt in the fighting and has said Israel would invade Rafah with or without an agreement.
Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, met with the relatives of the hostages on Monday and told them that, “We are committed to achieving the war’s objectives, but Hamas’s rejection of any framework that would allow the release of the hostages compels us to start the Rafah operation,” according to a statement from his office.
“Even after the start of the operation in Rafah,” Mr. Gallant said, “all efforts to return the hostages will continue.”
Salama Marouf, the head of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, said in a statement on Monday that the evacuation order showed that Israel “went into truce negotiations deceptively, without abandoning the idea of a broad aggression against Rafah.” He said the announcement was “a real test of the seriousness” of the countries that had warned against an invasion of the city.
Thousands of people were leaving Rafah on Monday, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which said that there had been “escalating Israeli airstrikes” in areas east of the city. In an interview, Dr. Marwan al-Hams, the director of Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, said that his hospital had received the bodies of 26 people killed by Israeli fire, and had treated 50 wounded people in the last day.
Israel’s closest ally, the United States, has urged it not mount a major offensive into Rafah without a credible plan to protect civilians there, many of whom fled to the city as a last refuge from Israel’s airstrikes and ground invasion elsewhere in Gaza. The city is packed with about a million people, many of them living in makeshift tents. It is also a main entry point for aid from Egypt.
On Monday, President Biden spoke to Mr. Netanyahu and “updated” him on the hostage talks, which were continuing on Monday in Qatar, according to a brief summary of the call released by the White House. Mr. Biden also “reiterated his clear position on Rafah,” the White House statement said. Mr. Netanyahu’s office did not immediately release its own summary of the conversation.
After the Israeli military issued its evacuation order, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain reiterated that he remained “deeply concerned” about an invasion, while Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry warned Israel against advancing what it called a “bloody and systematic” campaign to storm all of Gaza and displace its residents.
In Rafah, some Palestinians quickly dismantled their tents in the pouring rain and began leaving. Others questioned whether it was safe to leave. Gazans and aid groups have said that the Israeli military has bombed areas that it has previously designated as safe for civilians.
Nidal Kuhail, 29, a former resident of Gaza City, said he was overcome with anxiety and divided over what to do. The tent he was sheltering in was not in the area of Rafah covered by Israel’s evacuation order.
“If we have to leave, we will be entering the unknown,” Mr. Kuhail said. “Are we going to have a place to go? Are we going to be able to find a place to set up the tent?”
Workers for UNRWA, the main United Nations agency that aids Palestinians in Gaza, estimated on Monday that about 200 people an hour were fleeing the evacuation zone, said Sam Rose, the agency’s director of planning.
Israel was telling Palestinians to move to an area that includes al-Mawasi, a coastal section of Gaza it has advised people to go to for months, as well as areas farther north along the coast to Deir al-Balah. The military said the area had field hospitals, tents and larger supplies of food, water and medicine.
Israel was not calling for a “wide-scale evacuation of Rafah,” a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said on Monday. “This is a very specific scoped operation at the moment to move people out of harm’s way.”
But Mr. Rose said that the area would not be able to safely accommodate all the civilians who have sheltered in Rafah, in part because parts of it are littered with unexploded bombs.
Going there would also move them farther from the entry points for desperately needed food, water, medicines and other supplies, which aid agencies have struggled to distribute around Gaza.
“They would basically be going back to oblivion,” Mr. Rose said.
Mahmoud Mohammed al-Burdeiny, 26, said he thought Israel had been using the threat of a Rafah invasion as a bluff to get a better deal from Hamas in cease-fire talks. But now the danger felt real, he said.
So Mr. al-Burdeiny and his wife began to pack their belongings and plan for the worst. They could take the doors of their house with them to use as shelter, they realized. And they could take apart their furniture to use as firewood.
“I do not want to see what happened to the people in Gaza City and in the north happen again in Rafah,” he said. “I am really so worried about my whole family.”
Some Palestinians said on Monday that they could not afford to leave. They said that a taxi out of Rafah would cost more than $260, and a motorized rickshaw about half that. A donkey-drawn cart would cost around $13, but even that was too expensive for many people.
Food prices in Rafah were also spiking, Palestinians said. Sugar rose to $10 per kilogram from $3. The price of fuel also jumped, to $12 a liter from $8.
“All the people around me are evacuating,” said Mousa Ramadan al-Bahabsa, 55, who was sheltering with his 11 children in a tent at a U.N. school in Rafah, and said the war had left him penniless.
“I do not know where to go or who to ask for help,” said Mr. al-Bahabsa, who said his family had already moved three times since October.
Despite pressure from the United States and other countries, Mr. Netanyahu has vowed to invade Rafah, saying that Hamas battalions hiding there must be destroyed. On Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu repeated that promise, declaring in a speech in English marking Holocaust Remembrance Day that Israel “will defeat our genocidal enemies.”
Colonel Shoshani said that a rocket attack on Sunday by the armed wing of Hamas, which killed four Israeli soldiers near the Kerem Shalom border crossing, was a “violent reminder” of the group’s presence in Rafah.
Aid groups have warned that an invasion of Rafah would be devastating to civilians there and in the north who are on the brink of starvation and rely on food and water entering Gaza from the Rafah border crossing.
“This is as bad as it gets, and will lead to horrifying levels of suffering and death,” said Kiryn Lanning, the International Rescue Committee’s country director for occupied Palestinian territory. “If not stopped, this offensive will result in catastrophic humanitarian consequences despite months of warnings.”
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