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The Israeli army said on Thursday fighting was occurring in an area near the center of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, appearing to escalate its operation against Hamas in a week when Israel has faced increasing diplomatic and legal pressure. War effort.
The fighting came shortly after the United Nations' highest court, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, said it would respond on Friday to South Africa's motion to order an immediate halt to ground attacks in Rafah. Although the court has no means of enforcing the order, asking Israel to refrain from attacks would be another setback for the country on the international stage.
The Israeli military announced Thursday that it was conducting operations in the Brazil and Shaboula districts of Rafah, located approximately halfway between Israel's southwest border and the Mediterranean coast. When the Israeli army began its invasion of Rafah on May 6, it announced that it was carrying out limited operations against Hamas battalions in the city, along the Gaza Strip-Egypt border. Ta.
“The Israeli army is continuing its operations in certain areas of Rafah,” it said in a statement, adding that it was “making every effort to prevent harm to civilians” and that it was advancing “after the civilian population in the area has been evacuated.”
The United Nations said this week that some 815,000 people have already left Rafah as a result of the fighting and Israeli evacuation warnings — well over half the number of Palestinians who have flocked to Rafah in recent months to escape fighting elsewhere in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces dismantled several tunnels and killed the militants in “close encounters,” the military said. Israel's account of the battle could not be independently verified. Hamas did not immediately comment on Thursday's fighting.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attack on Rafah was essential to defeat Hamas' remaining battalions and dismantle the group's infrastructure, including its underground tunnels in the Gaza Strip. Israel also wants to destroy tunnels that lead from the Gaza Strip to Egypt, beneath the buffer zone at the southern edge of the Gaza Strip. According to the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project, Israeli forces are advancing along the buffer zone, known in Israel as the Philadelphia Corridor. The Israeli army said it would not comment on troop locations.
President Biden has warned Prime Minister Netanyahu not to launch a large-scale military operation in Rafah without a plan for civilians, including the more than 1 million people who fled there to escape bombing and fighting elsewhere.
Most of the Palestinians evacuated from Rafah in recent weeks have moved to areas including the cities of Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah, as well as the coastal village of al-Mawashi. Israeli authorities said they had set up and equipped a humanitarian zone for the displaced.
Philippe Lazzarini, executive director of UNRWA, the UN's main agency assisting Palestinians, said this week that areas where newly displaced people are arriving are desperately overcrowded and that “emergency humanitarian assistance must be carried out in a safe and dignified manner.” “The minimum conditions for providing support are not in place.” ”
The Gaza Health Ministry said more than 100 people were killed and hundreds wounded in Gaza between Monday and Wednesday, a figure that could not be independently verified.
The Israeli army also said it was conducting operations in central Gaza and in Jabaliya in northern Gaza. Israel withdrew its troops from most of the territory earlier this year but is returning them to parts of northern and central Gaza to fight Hamas' attempts to reconstitute its military presence in the Gaza Strip.
This week, international attention focused on the announcements by Norway, Spain and Ireland that they would recognize an independent Palestinian state, and the International Criminal Court's prosecutor on Monday seeking arrest warrants for both Israeli and Hamas leaders over the war. Concentrating on the decision. crime.
Israel condemned the moves and said it would continue its operations to eliminate Hamas.
But some military analysts have questioned whether the Israeli military operation in Rafah will be able to deal a decisive blow to Hamas, saying many of the organization's fighters have likely moved out of the city, wary of a direct confrontation with superior military forces, before the long-awaited invasion can begin.
