Israel is preparing for the invasion of Rafah by purchasing 40 thousand tents which should be used for the evacuation of civilians. The news, filtered by an Israeli official, came after the Ministry of Defense had published a tender for the supply of tents on Monday. “We will complete the elimination of the Hamas battalions, including in Rafah. There is no force in the world that will stop us”, is the promise reiterated by Benjamin Netanyahu following the announcement that a date for the invasion of Rafah has been fixed.
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In Rafah, a city located in the southern Gaza Strip, near the border with Egypt, over a million Palestinians have taken refuge, having fled fighting in other parts of the enclave. Israel claims it is the last Hamas stronghold and intends to send ground troops to the city but the international community, including the United States, opposes the offensive because it would endanger civilians. “We have no evidence that genocide was committed,” said the head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, speaking to the US Congress while his hearing was interrupted several times by pro-Palestinian demonstrators. And he said pressure on Israel to increase the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza appears to have worked.
Israel’s threats on Rafah “raise questions about the purpose of resuming negotiations”, is the position expressed by Hamas through its spokesman Sami Abu Zahry. In Cairo, in the round of negotiations over the weekend, a new proposal for an agreement was presented: “We cannot accept such a proposal, which does not talk about a total and permanent ceasefire” and “a total withdrawal”, he said. Hamas said that the new proposal “ignores the requests of our people and focuses only on the return of the kidnapped”.
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Against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, there is a trade conflict between Israel and Türkiye. Ankara, openly critical of Israel for the military operation in the Strip, announced the introduction of restrictions with immediate effect on exports to Israel of 54 types of products, such as aluminium, steel, construction products, aviation fuel and chemical fertilizers. And in response, Israel announced that it is preparing a ban on products from Türkiye.
Meanwhile, tension is high awaiting the response promised by Iran to Israel for the April 1 raid on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, in which 7 members of the Revolutionary Guards were killed. “The only way to fight against the Zionists is a coalition of Islamic armies,” is the exhortation of the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Navy, Alireza Tangsiri. According to CNN, which cites US intelligence sources, Iran’s response will not be direct but will come through ‘proxies’, i.e. the various militant groups, mostly Shiites, that make up the Axis of Resistance, perhaps with a simultaneous attack with drones and missiles, because Tehran would not want to give the US and its allies an excuse to attack Iran directly. A worsening of the proxy war, therefore, against Israel, through Hezbollah or the Houthis. According to Channel 12, the IDF believes that any response would not come before the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which ends on April 12, and would target military or strategic assets and not civilian sites.
