Camps housing thousands of displaced people in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, near the Egyptian border. (Palestinian press)

Israeli occupation army aircraft and artillery bombed various areas in Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip. While many countries and organizations called on Israel to stop its imminent military operations on the city, the US President called on Tel Aviv to prepare a plan to “protect civilians” before the launch of the military operation.

On Sunday, the Israeli Broadcasting Authority (official) said that the Israeli army had approved an operational plan to launch a ground operation in Rafah, where 1.4 million Palestinians live, most of whom are displaced from other areas in the Gaza Strip, and Rafah represented their last refuge.

Al Jazeera's correspondent reported that Israeli aircraft launched 4 raids on the east of the city of Rafah, while the occupation artillery targeted southeast of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

In turn, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said on Tuesday, “Rafah is threatened with invasion and destruction like the rest of the cities and camps. There are one and a half million Palestinians trapped in the city.”

He continued, "If Israel has an intention to carry out the operation and there seems to be a determination to attack Rafah, then what is required of all of us is how to protect civilians, provide safe passages for them to exit from it, and guarantees that the passages will be safe and should not be attacked."

Al-Maliki pointed out that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are being killed by bullets and shelling, and some of them are killed as a result of hunger and epidemics. Gaza is turning into an infected area and a catastrophic area that needs urgent international intervention.

An international position

In a related context, a spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Tuesday that Israel had not communicated with the office regarding a plan to evacuate the Rafah area in the Gaza Strip, either individually or jointly.

He added, apart from this, that the United Nations does not participate in forced or involuntary evacuations, stressing that there is no plan at the present time to facilitate the evacuation of civilians.

Earlier, Israeli government spokesman Elon Levy called on United Nations agencies to "cooperate with Israel's efforts to protect civilians from Hamas and evacuate them from a war zone where terrorists are trying to use them as human shields."

For his part, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned - today, Tuesday - that the expected Israeli attack on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip will have “devastating consequences.”

He said that he hopes that the ongoing talks will succeed in achieving a truce in the war between the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Israel in the Gaza Strip.

In Washington, US President Joe Biden said, after discussions with King Abdullah II of Jordan at the White House, that a military operation should not be launched in Rafah without a plan that guarantees the security of civilians.

He explained that Washington opposes the forced displacement of Gaza residents.

International warnings

On the other hand, China called on Israel to quickly stop its military operation in the city of Rafah, and warned of a humanitarian catastrophe in the city if the fighting continued.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that his country requested a humanitarian truce in Gaza, but that did not happen, indicating that Washington is pushing the entire region towards disaster.

For his part, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned the Israeli attacks on the city of Rafah, describing them as brutal and terrible. He said in a tweet on his account on the .

In Germany, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock expressed her deep concern over Israel's announcement of its intention to launch a major military attack on Rafah.

As for Iran, its Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian warned that the Israeli attacks on the city of Rafah would have serious consequences for Israel.

In turn, Pakistan said that Tel Aviv is violating the measures ordered by the International Court of Justice last month, aimed at protecting the residents of the Gaza Strip from genocide, and expressed its condemnation of the Israeli attack on Rafah.

In the same context, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, expressed his deep concern about the expected ground invasion by Israeli forces in the city of Rafah.

Khan noted that despite his continued messages, Israel's behavior and practices have not changed, and stressed that his office "is actively investigating any alleged crimes with the aim of holding violators of international law accountable."

Yesterday, Monday, Amnesty International warned of a real and imminent danger of genocide threatening Rafah, as there is nowhere for civilians to go to escape the bombing.

Since last October 7, Israel has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, which as of Monday left 28,340 martyrs and 67,984 injured, most of them children and women, in addition to thousands missing under the rubble, according to Palestinian and UN data.

Source: Al Jazeera + agencies