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Photo: Mohammed Abed / AFP
According to a media report, Israel has proposed setting up extensive tent cities for the city's population to be evacuated ahead of the planned military offensive on Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip. As the Wall Street Journal newspaper reported on Monday (local time), citing Egyptian officials, Israel's evacuation proposal calls for the establishment of 15 camps, each with around 25,000 tents, in the southwestern part of the sealed-off coastal area.
Egypt, which borders Rafah, would be responsible for setting up the camps and field hospitals, it said. The city is overcrowded with hundreds of thousands of Palestinian internally displaced people seeking protection in a very small space. In the war against the terrorist organization Hamas, Israel is currently preparing for a military offensive on the city, which it sees as Hamas's last bastion in Gaza.
The proposal to evacuate the population was made to Egypt in recent days, the newspaper reported. It comes at a time when Israel's planned military offensive on Rafah is met with strong international criticism.
Israel's government has called on UN organizations working in the region to help evacuate civilians from Rafah. Everything that happens in the southern part of the region on the border with Egypt must take place with full respect for the protection of the civilian population, said UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric on Monday in New York. “We will not take part in the expulsion of people.” He also questioned whether there were safe havens in other areas of Gaza, also in view of the many unexploded bombs.
US President Joe Biden once again urgently called for the protection of the civilian population in view of the planned Israeli military offensive in Rafah. After meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah II in the White House, Biden said on Monday (local time): A military operation in Rafah should not take place "without a credible plan to ensure the security and support of more than a million people seeking protection there «. Many people there have been displaced from other places, displaced several times, fleeing violence in the north. Now they are “crammed together, unprotected and defenseless” in Rafah. “They must be protected,” demanded Biden. The US government also made it clear from the start that it was against any forced expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
Jordan's King Abdullah II warned clearly against an offensive. »We cannot afford an Israeli attack on Rafah. It will certainly lead to another humanitarian catastrophe,” he said. The situation is already unbearable for more than a million people who have been displaced there since the start of the war. He called for an immediate, permanent ceasefire. "This war must stop."
hen/dpa