If Israel were to begin an invasion in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, an Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone” along the coast would be expanded to take in more civilians, an Israeli military official said Monday evening.
The comments were among the first indications of the Israeli military’s plans for civilians if it were to launch a major ground offensive in Rafah. The Biden administration has urged Israel to forgo such an operation because of the risks it would pose to displaced Palestinians.
Palestinians who have sought shelter in Rafah have been bracing for an Israeli incursion for months, huddling in crowded tents, schools and apartments. Before arriving in Rafah, many had followed earlier Israeli calls to evacuate other areas in Gaza only to encounter bombardment in those places too.
Israeli officials have repeatedly said that the army will enter Rafah to fight Hamas battalions there, bucking international pressure to back off any operation.
In the case of an invasion, Israel would tell Palestinians to go to the enlarged “humanitarian zone,” which would include a narrow strip of beachside land known as Al-Mawasi, and other unidentified areas in Gaza, said the Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Mohammed al-Hassi, 48, a medic sheltering in Al-Mawasi, said the area was already overflowing with displaced people. He worried another influx would make conditions worse.
“There aren’t enough bathrooms, there isn’t enough clean water and there isn’t enough space,” he said. “The existing infrastructure can barely handle the number of people already here.”
It was unclear how much land beyond Al-Mawasi that Israel would seek to designate as a “humanitarian zone” for civilians. Satellite imagery from Planet Labs revealed a significant increase in the number of people there over the last few months: An aerial image from Sunday showed tent encampments occupying land that had been empty in mid-January.
The fighting continued elsewhere in Gaza on Tuesday, with the Israeli military saying it carried out several airstrikes in Beit Lahia, one of the northernmost cities in the Gaza Strip,
The Israeli strikes killed at least one person and injured several others in Beit Lahia and damaged and set fire to several houses in nearby Gaza City, according to Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency. The strikes were carried out in response to rockets launched from the area toward southern Israel, all of which were successfully intercepted, according to the military.
Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, or I.D.F., on Tuesday issued an “urgent warning” to residents to immediately evacuate parts of Beit Lahia. “You are in a dangerous combat zone,” Colonel Adraee wrote in Arabic on social media. “The I.D.F. will work with extreme force against terrorist infrastructure and subversive elements in the region.”
He ordered residents to move to shelters in other areas. But many residents of Gaza have said that no area is safe from Israeli military bombardment.
The Israeli military has heavily damaged Beit Lahia during previous offensives. The city, once known as Gaza’s breadbasket, is part of northern Gaza, where humanitarian officials have warned of the risk of famine as Israel has come under increasing international pressure to allow more aid to enter the enclave.
Addressing concerns about a Rafah invasion, Sandra Rasheed, the director of the Jerusalem office of Anera, a relief group, said that Israel had not told the aid group of an imminent operation there, but the organization had found a shelter for its staff members and their families to relocate to in Al-Mawasi. U.N. officials also said Israel had not informed them of an impending invasion.
Israel’s military first said Gaza’s residents should move to Al-Mawasi in mid-October, and it reiterated that demand in December, when it issued evacuation orders for the nearby city of Khan Younis and told residents to head to Al-Mawasi and some areas in Rafah.
Satellite imagery also appeared to show a new cluster of hundreds of tents being built west of Khan Younis. Imagery taken on Thursday showed more than 100 tents in the area, while imagery captured on Sunday showed more than 400.
Rafah is on the border with Egypt, but because Egypt is allowing hardly any Gazans to enter, there are few clear options for moving large numbers of civilians out of the city.
Earlier this month, Jamie McGoldrick, then a senior U.N. humanitarian official in Jerusalem, said that an Israeli invasion of Rafah could force hundreds of thousands of people to try to flee for points north, a risky journey across bombed-out roads littered with unexploded ordnance.
The Biden administration has repeatedly urged Israel to hold off on a major military assault on Rafah, including in a virtual meeting last week. During that meeting, U.S. officials evaluated options for the attack presented by Israel, but were not convinced that those plans met President Biden’s insistence that any operation be calibrated to minimize civilian casualties, according to a White House statement.
At a news conference in Washington on Tuesday, David Satterfield, the U.S. special envoy for humanitarian issues in Gaza, reiterated the Biden administration’s concerns about Israel’s plans to invade Rafah.
“We could not support a Rafah ground operation without an appropriate, credible, executable humanitarian plan,” Mr. Satterfield said, warning that an invasion would complicate aid deliveries and displace civilians who have already been uprooted multiple times.
“Where do they go?” he said. “How will their needs be met — shelter, medicine, water, sanitation?”
Al-Mawasi has previously been struck by the Israeli army, according to Palestinians in the area. Israel has accused militants of firing rockets from Al-Mawasi.
“There’s no safe place,” said Mr. al-Hassi, the medic sheltering in Al-Mawasi. “I’m someone with no hostility toward Israel or anyone in the world, but I can’t guarantee that the building, the land, or the car I’m next to won’t be targeted.”
In Rafah, Rajab al-Sindawi, a secondhand clothing salesman who had fled there from Gaza City in the north, said he was feeling anxious as he, his wife and their seven children squeezed into a small tent on a sidewalk.
“The people are all waiting to hear how they will move us,” he said.
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