Israel-Hamas: IDF strikes on Rafah, fears of a ground operation

Europe 1 with AFP 9:11 a.m., February 10, 2024

The Israeli army bombs the Rafah sector on Saturday, at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip, with Benjamin Netanyahu ordering the military to prepare an "evacuation plan" for hundreds of thousands of civilians there before a possible ground offensive.

Early Saturday, witnesses reported strikes in the vicinity of this city now populated by around 1.3 million Palestinians, more than half of the population of the Gaza Strip, the vast majority were people who were there are refugees to escape the violence further north.

The Hamas health minister counted 110 dead in the evening and night, including 25 in strikes in Rafah, and reported "intense fighting" on Saturday in the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes. On Friday, Israeli forces stormed the city's other major hospital, al-Amal.

“It is impossible to achieve the objective of the war without eliminating Hamas”

After Gaza City, then Khan Younes, Israel is now targeting a ground operation in this city adjoining Egypt, in the far south of the Gaza Strip, as part of its military offensive against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

After ordering the army on Wednesday to prepare an offensive on Rafah, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked it on Friday to submit a "combined plan" for the "evacuation" of civilians from Rafah and the "destruction" of Hamas in this city. “It is impossible to achieve the objective of the war without eliminating Hamas and leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah,” and that requires “civilians to evacuate the combat zones,” he said.

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But "if they (the Israeli army) invade Rafah, as Netanyahu said, there will be massacres and we will be able to say goodbye to all humanity," said Adel al-Hajj, a displaced person in the city.

“Catastrophic”

In Rafah, during the day on Friday, several buildings were destroyed, according to AFP photographers. In one neighborhood, people are seen carrying the bodies of three children killed in a bombing. “Forcing more than a million Palestinians displaced in Rafah to evacuate again without finding a safe place to go would be illegal and have catastrophic consequences,” Nadia Hardman, migrant and refugee rights specialist for Human, said overnight. Rights Watch.

"There is no safe place in Gaza. The international community must take action to prevent further atrocities," she added, while the UN and even the United States, Israel's main ally , reported fears for civilians on site.

“Carrying out such an operation now (in Rafah) without planning and without thought in an area housing a million people would be a disaster,” the US State Department warned this week. In a rare criticism of Israel since the start four months ago of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, US President Joe Biden deemed the “retaliatory response in the Gaza Strip” “excessive”. to the attack of October 7.

27,940 dead in Gaza

The war was sparked by an unprecedented attack carried out that day by Hamas commandos infiltrated from the Gaza Strip in southern Israel, which left more than 1,160 dead, mostly civilians, according to a count of AFP based on official Israeli data.

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In retaliation, Israel vowed to "destroy" Hamas and launched a vast offensive which left at least 27,940 dead in Gaza, the vast majority civilians, according to the Ministry of Health of the Islamist movement, which took power in 2007. in the Palestinian territory.

Talks, strikes and finances

During the October 7 attack, around 250 people were also kidnapped and taken to Gaza. A one-week truce last November allowed the release of more than a hundred hostages in exchange for those of some 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

New negotiations between Qatari and Egyptian mediators and Hamas, launched Thursday in Cairo to try to reach a truce agreement including an exchange of Palestinian prisoners and hostages, ended Friday, an official told AFP of Hamas. “The Hamas delegation has left Cairo,” said this official, saying, without further details, “to wait for a response from Israel.”

According to the Axios website, the head of the CIA must go to Egypt next week to try to secure a new break in the fighting and the release of hostages in Gaza. Outside this Palestinian territory, Israel targeted the area around the Syrian capital Damascus during the night, according to the official Syrian agency Sana which reported "material" damage.

On the markets, Israel saw the rating agency Moody's lower its debt rating by one notch, from A1 to A2, due to the repercussions "of the ongoing conflict with Hamas" which "increase" the political risk for the country and “weaken” its institutions as well as its “fiscal solidity”.

The former Israeli Minister of Finance, now an opposition MP, Avigdor Lieberman, attributed this decision on the social network . According to the financial agency Bloomberg, this is the very first time that Israel has experienced a downgrade in its long-term rating.