Gaza war: Federal government urges Israel to show restraint if the fighting expands to Rafah

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It is estimated that up to 1.3 million people live in Rafah in very small spaces and under precarious conditions

Photo: Said Khatib / AFP

Israel is apparently planning an attack on the Rafah border crossing in the Gaza Strip - now the federal government is also urging restraint. “There are also rules when it comes to the right to self-defense,” says a spokesman for the Foreign Office. International military law applies - Israel must comply with it even if Hamas does not adhere to it.

The federal government continues to advocate for a “humanitarian pause in fighting.” "We have already asked Israel very clearly several times to adapt its operations, to better protect civilians, to better protect UN facilities and hospitals in particular, and to allow significantly more humanitarian aid." Should the fighting in Rafah actually intensify, the obligation would be increased Effective protection of civilians applies even more, said the spokesman.

Israeli Defense Minister Joaw Gallant had announced that Israeli troops could also advance to Rafah on the Egyptian border. The Hamas units in Rafah would be “dissolved” just as they were in Khan Yunis, Gallant said during a visit to Israeli soldiers.

Rafah is “a pressure cooker of despair”

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) has also expressed concern about the deteriorating situation in the south of the Gaza Strip. The city of Rafah on the border with Egypt is "a pressure cooker of despair and we are afraid of what comes next," says Ocha spokesman Jens Laerke. There is "no safe place" in the Gaza Strip, said Laerke, "not even in Rafah."

Richard Peeperkorn from the World Health Organization (WHO) explained that Rafah, which once had around 200,000 inhabitants, is now home to more than half of the more than two million residents of the Gaza Strip. Nevertheless, there has been “no improvement in the humanitarian situation” in the Gaza Strip in the past few weeks, says Laerke. The demand for humanitarian corridors was loud from Peeperkorn - only three of 15 missions in the north of the Gaza Strip could be carried out by the WHO, he says. In the south there were four of eleven planned missions.

With the border into Egypt remaining closed to most Palestinians, the streets of Rafah have filled with thousands of displaced people. Most of them have gathered in the center of the city or in the west. They avoid the eastern outskirts of the city on the border with Israel as well as the north, which is dangerously close to the fighting in Khan Yunis.

lph/Reuters/AFP