PM acknowledges international pressure is increasing but says it will not stop Israel achieving its goals
Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead with sending Israeli troops into Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, rejecting deep international concerns over the risks to more than a million Palestinians who have sought shelter there.
Netanyahu said no amount of international pressure would stop Israel from realising all of its war aims.
“On the diplomatic front, until now we have succeeded in allowing our forces to fight in an unprecedented manner for five full months. However, it is no secret that the international pressure is increasing,” Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting.
“Those who say that the action in Rafah will not occur are those who also said that we would not enter Gaza, or act in Shifa or in Khan Younis, and that we would not resume the fighting after the pause [in hostilities in November].”
Israeli military officials say Rafah is Hamas’s last stronghold in Gaza, with thousands of militants as well as senior leaders based there. They say leaving Rafah untouched would allow Hamas to retain control of parts of Gaza, exploit tunnels to Egypt and quickly rebuild its forces in the future.
However, Rafah is now home to more than 1 million people displaced from elsewhere in Gaza by the Israeli offensive launched after the attacks into Israel in October, in which Hamas killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seized about 250 hostages.
The city is also a major logistics hub for the distribution of aid through Gaza, where famine looms and one in three children under the age of two in the north of the territory are acutely malnourished, according to the UN.
Joe Biden has said a Rafah invasion would be a “red line” without credible measures to protect civilians.
Israel has said it will create “humanitarian islands” to shelter the huge numbers now living in tented encampments or crowded shelters in Rafah.
The World Health Organization director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, urged Israel “in the name of humanity” not to go ahead with an assault, warning that “this humanitarian catastrophe must not be allowed to worsen”.
On Sunday an Israeli delegation travelled to Qatar to resume indirect talks for a ceasefire in Gaza and hostage release deal. Negotiations have been continuing intermittently for months but hopes of a breakthrough before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which started on Monday, proved unfounded.
