AFP Jerusalem
Jerusalem
Updated Sunday, March 17, 2024-17:59
Middle East Disembarkation of humanitarian aid transported by Open Arms to Gaza concludes
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Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu
warned this Sunday that
"international pressure" will not prevent Israel from launching an offensive in Rafah
, a city in the southern
Gaza Strip
where nearly 1.5 million Palestinians are crowded, according to the ONU.
"No international pressure will prevent us from achieving all the objectives of our war"
against the Palestinian Islamist movement
Hamas
, he declared at the beginning of the meeting of his government, according to a statement sent by his office.
"We will act in Rafah, it will take a few weeks, but it will happen," he added.
But hours later the president assured that Israel will not leave civilians in Rafah trapped when its forces begin an assault. "It is not something we will do while keeping the population locked in place. In fact, we will do the opposite:
we will allow them to leave
," he said during a press statement in Jerusalem with German Chancellor
Olaf Scholz
.
Scholz, who traveled to Israel yesterday, warned that an attack on Rafah would make regional peace "very difficult."
And he discussed with Netanyahu the position of the Israeli delegation that will soon travel to Qatar for
talks on a possible six-week truce and an exchange of hostages
for Palestinian prisoners.
The leader of the German Government, who also met this Sunday with Israeli President
Isaac Herzog
and other senior Jewish officials, demanded that "
a large amount of aid reach Gaza
now."
Scholz also held a meeting with Jordanian King
Abdullah II
in the town of Aqaba, in southern Jordan. The sovereign urged "to intensify efforts to protect civilians, provide sufficient humanitarian aid in the Strip, in addition to sending it with all possible avenues," according to Jordanian television Al Mamlaka.
Abdullah II warned his interlocutor of the "danger" of suspending
funding for the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees
(UNRWA), after Germany did the same following Israel's accusations against a dozen workers from the organization. having participated in the
attacks of October 7
.
On Friday, following the announcement that Netanyahu had approved the army's "action plans" for an offensive on Rafah, the German Foreign Ministry insisted that such an offensive "could not be justified."
More than a million people have taken refuge there and have nowhere to go
.
A possible offensive in Rafah, where Netanyahu intends to eliminate "the last battalions of Hamas", is
feared by the international community
at a time when the
death toll already exceeds 31,500 in the Gaza Strip
, according to Hamas authorities, and The humanitarian crisis there is capital.
Washington has been warning for several weeks of the
risk to the civilian population of Rafah
, and on Friday the White House demanded to see Israel's "plans" for this offensive.
The war in the Gaza Strip was triggered by a Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, which killed at least 1,160 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.