The Israeli attack on Rafah it gets closer and closer. Tel Aviv media reported that IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi approved the plans for the imminent operation in the city on the border with Egypt, the last stronghold of Hamas in the Gaza Strip where there are four terrorist battalions and around a million civilians who fled the fighting zones in recent months.
The Israeli military also said it had handed over responsibility for the safety corridor central exclave to the reservist combat teams of the Yiftach and Carmeli brigades, which are “carrying out targeted raids to eliminate terrorists and locate and destroy terrorist infrastructure in the area” with the aim of protecting “the corridor in the center of the Gaza Strip” and bring “forward actions that will allow the transfer of humanitarian aid”. Furthermore, the heads of the Southern Command and the 99th Division carried out an assessment of the situation on the field on Friday 26 April and approved new operational plans for the continuation of the fighting. For its part, the United States has said the Jewish state will listen to its concerns before proceeding. “They assured us that they will not go to Rafah until we have had a chance to truly share our perspectives and concerns with them” said White House national security spokesman John Kirby. “The Israelis have begun to fulfill the commitments that President Biden asked them to fulfill“.
In addition to military preparations, the IDF has set up refugee camps in the Khan Younis area to host civilians still in Rafah. A full evacuation of the city is estimated to take three weeks, but Jewish state forces are likely to attack much sooner. According to PA President Abu Mazen, “Israel will enter Rafah in next days” And “the United States is the only country that can prevent Israel from attacking Rafah. We demand an end to the fighting and the provision of aid to the Gaza Strip”.
Over the past few months, several international associations have declared that the IDF’s operations will cause a humanitarian catastrophe and Washington tried to put pressure on Tel Aviv to convince the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to authorize the offensive, also threatening to suspend military aid to Israel if safe corridors for civilians were not provided. The prime minister of Tel Aviv has always rejected the White House’s requests, claiming that the total defeat of Hamas would not be possible without the conquest of Rafah. This posture is also conditioned by the internal politics of the Jewish State. The far-right parties that make up the executive, in fact, have always sided in favor of the attack.
On Sunday 28 April, the Minister of Finance and exponent of the Religious Zionism formation Bezalel Smotrich declared that “the government will not have the right to exist if he decides to wave the white flag and immediately cancel the order to conquer Rafah to complete the mission of destroying Hamas and bring peace to the residents of southern Israel and all citizens of the country”.
