The Israeli military said on Tuesday that its tanks had entered Rafah in southern Gaza and had seized control of the city’s critical border crossing with Egypt in what it called a limited operation to eliminate Hamas fighters and infrastructure that had been used to attack and kill four Israeli soldiers on Sunday.
The incursion did not appear to be the long-anticipated full-scale invasion of Rafah, a city crowded with about a million Palestinians, which Israel’s allies have been working to avert by pushing for a cease-fire deal.
International humanitarian officials said the military operation had halted the flow of aid from Egypt into Gaza, exacerbating extreme hunger and privation in the besieged territory.
“The situation is catastrophic in every sense of the word,” said Dr. Suhaib Hems, the head of Kuwait Hospital in Rafah, adding that 27 bodies and 150 wounded people had been brought to his facility since Israeli tanks entered the city.
The Israeli military said it had killed about 20 people in Rafah, describing the dead as Hamas militants.
Hamas said it had fired on Israeli soldiers on Tuesday at another vital aid crossing, near Kerem Shalom, along Gaza’s southern border with Israel. The Israeli military said that four mortar shells and two rockets had been launched toward Kerem Shalom from Rafah but that no injuries or damage were reported.
Israel says Rafah is Hamas’s last bastion, home to several battalions hiding out, and a critical gateway for arms shipments smuggled into Gaza from Egypt. But the city has also become a refuge for Palestinians who have fled Israeli bombardment in other parts of Gaza, and many have squeezed into tents without adequate access to food, water and sanitation.
Rafah is also a main entry point for humanitarian aid flowing into Gaza from Egypt. But Israel closed that entry point on Tuesday, as well as the Kerem Shalom crossing. Hamas had claimed responsibility for killing four Israeli soldiers in a rocket attack that was fired from Rafah toward Kerem Shalom on Sunday.
The Israeli drive into Rafah came after a dizzying day on Monday, when the Israeli military ordered about 110,000 people to evacuate parts of the city; Hamas said it had accepted a revised cease-fire proposal; and Israel said it was carrying out “targeted strikes” in eastern Rafah.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel characterized Hamas’s announcement that it would accept a revised cease-fire deal as a political maneuver “designed to torpedo the entry of our forces into Rafah.”
The text of Hamas’s revised proposal was circulating in the Israeli news media on Tuesday and was confirmed as authentic by a senior Hamas official.
The most substantive sticking point centers on a key phrase that appears in both the Israeli- and Hamas-approved proposals: a path to a “sustainable calm.”
In Hamas’s revision, that phrase is clearly defined as a permanent end to the war and a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip. Mr. Netanyahu has consistently opposed any deal that explicitly calls for a permanent cease-fire, saying Israeli forces will not stop fighting in Gaza until Hamas is completely destroyed and the hostages are released.
Hamas’s revised proposal, Mr. Netanyahu said on Tuesday, was “very far from Israel’s core demands.” In his statement, he added that, “military pressure on Hamas is an essential condition to secure the release of our hostages.”
Nevertheless, Mr. Netanyahu authorized a midlevel delegation to travel to Cairo on Tuesday to continue indirect talks with Hamas.
William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, was in Cairo on Tuesday to attend the talks, which were at a “delicate stage,” John F. Kirby, the White House national security spokesman, told reporters in Washington. Mr. Kirby said: “There should be no reason why they can’t overcome those remaining gaps.”
Mr. Netanyahu has been facing pressure to agree to a deal that would halt the fighting in Gaza, free hostages there and allow more aid into the territory. Analysts said Israel’s incursion into Rafah could either ratchet up the pressure on Hamas to strike a deal or sabotage the negotiations.
“We are at a decisive moment for the Palestinian and Israeli people and for the fate of the entire region,” António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, said in a statement on Tuesday. He added, “It would be tragic if weeks of intense diplomatic activity for peace in Gaza yield no cease-fire. No release of hostages. And a devastating offensive in Rafah.”
U.N. officials said Tuesday that Israeli troops had now “choked off” both the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings, the two main routes for aid entering Gaza, and the officials warned that the humanitarian crisis in the enclave would worsen.
Egypt’s foreign ministry on Tuesday said that Israel’s seizure of the Rafah crossing was a “dangerous escalation” that threatened the lives of Palestinians sheltering in the city.
Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s top diplomat, also condemned the Israeli assault.
“The land offensive against Rafah has started again, despite all the requests of the international community, the U.S., European Union member states, everybody asking Netanyahu not to attack Rafah,” he told reporters in Brussels. “I am afraid that this is going to cause again a lot of casualties, civilian casualties.”
Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing, said the closure had prevented 46 injured and sick people from leaving Gaza for medical treatment in Egypt. The patients included people with breast cancer, lymphoma and other ailments, the Gaza health ministry said.
President Biden has urged Mr. Netanyahu to resist launching a full-scale invasion of Rafah, warning that it would be devastating to Palestinian civilians.
Mr. Kirby, the White House spokesman, said on Tuesday that Israel had told the Biden administration that its operation in Rafah was “limited” and “designed to cut off Hamas’s ability to smuggle weapons into Gaza.” Mr. Kirby said that the administration still opposed a full-scale invasion of Rafah.
The Israeli military said its troops had found three tunnel shafts in an area near the Rafah crossing. That claim could not be immediately verified. Israeli and Egyptian officials have said in the past that Gaza’s border with Egypt was a route for smuggling arms into the coastal enclave.
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said he visited troops near Rafah and that the operation there would continue until the last Hamas brigade in the city was destroyed “or until the return of the first hostage to Israel.”
It was not immediately clear on Tuesday how many civilians were able to flee Rafah after the Israeli military dropped leaflets in the eastern part of the city on Monday, instructing people to move to what the military called expanded safe zones to the north. The military said on Tuesday that the majority of civilians in the targeted area had left.
U.N. and European officials said on Tuesday that the Israeli military’s designated safe zones, about 10 miles from Rafah, were neither safe nor equipped to receive more displaced Palestinians.
Rafah has about one toilet for every 850 people and one shower for every 3,500 people, James Elder, a spokesman for UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, told reporters in Geneva. In the designated safe zones, he said, conditions were “staggeringly, much worse.”
Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the U.N. human rights office, told reporters in Geneva that there were “strong indications” that the order telling civilians to evacuate eastern Rafah violated international humanitarian law. Her comments came a day after Volker Türk, the U.N. human rights chief, warned that forced displacement of civilians is a war crime.
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