Netanyahu puts pressure on Hamas with the total invasion of Rafah to try to unblock the truce | International

Israel, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, continues to bet on attacking while negotiating a possible truce. The army maintains in Rafah the positions it gained in the early hours of Tuesday in the southeast of the Palestinian enclave. It has not advanced on the ground, nor has it occupied the urban area, nor has it carried out large-scale incursions into densely populated areas in that city in the south of the Strip. But the Armed Forces reported this Wednesday that the troops deployed are carrying out “precise” attacks in the east of Rafah in an operation that they consider anti-terrorist to weaken Hamas. At the same time, bombings from the air continue, in this case over densely populated areas, since in this southern end of Gaza where the city of Rafah is located there are around 1.5 million people who do not care. Help is coming from outside, the UN denounces.

More than 24 hours have passed since the Israeli assault and takeover of the strategic border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. This decision to invade the Rafah area without entering the population center confirms the strategy outlined by Netanyahu, who affirms that the fundamentalists maintain four battalions there. The idea is to use this operation as a weapon of pressure against Hamas in the ceasefire negotiations that will allow the hostages to be released.

At the same time, the president, in the midst of a complicated political and social balance, must take into account the internal counterweights that keep his Executive threatened and the international pressure so that he does not destroy Rafah, where it is assumed that the majority of the around 130 hostages that remain. It is estimated that several dozen of them may have died. His relatives also pressure Netanyahu every day with demonstrations.

Conversations in Cairo

In parallel, Israel maintains a delegation in Cairo that the local media describes as low profile, enough not to close indirect contacts with the Hamas leadership to reach a truce. In the Egyptian capital, no progress is perceived, but they will continue there, according to an official source told the Reuters agency this Wednesday.

The negotiating triangulation is completed with the trip this Wednesday to Israel of the American William Burns, head of the CIA, who in recent days has held meetings in Qatar and Egypt. The head of the US intelligence services will meet with Netanyahu, in addition to maintaining other contacts with the intention of ironing out differences with Hamas.

The White House has defended the presence of Israeli military inside Rafah, whose invasion it had criticized in recent weeks. Washington expressed reservations, especially because the Jewish state had no plan to safeguard hundreds of thousands of civilians. The vast majority are displaced by war on previous occasions from other areas of the Strip who came to the south after Israel promised that it was a safe area.

“People are wondering where to go,” explains Mohamed Al Najjar, a 23-year-old law student, by phone from the Tel Al Sultan neighborhood in western Rafah, as he watches cars loaded with families pass by. That is the furthest area – about five kilometers – from the border crossing taken by the occupation troops, so Al Najjar’s family, for the moment, is not considering leaving the building in which some 50 people from all walks of life live. ages. “We live in a permanent state of confusion, not knowing what to do, because there is no safe place in Rafah,” he adds.

“The city streets echo with the cries of innocent lives lost, families torn apart and homes reduced to rubble. “We are on the verge of a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions,” warned the mayor of Rafah, Ahmed Al-Sofi. The president said this in a call to the international community to intervene, reports the Reuters agency. “There has been continuous shelling in this area throughout the day. “No fuel or help has come in,” he added.

One of the great concerns of the United Nations and humanitarian organizations is how the arrival of Israeli troops in Rafah will complicate caring for these displaced people. Israel announced this Wednesday that it was reopening the Kerem Shalom border crossing, closed since Hamas launched an attack last Sunday in which four Israeli soldiers were killed. Late this Wednesday, an Israeli military spokesman assured the Efe agency that Israel had closed that crossing again, after an alleged new attack by Hamas. The Rafah crossing, the other route through which humanitarian aid arrives, remains closed.

Humanitarian aid

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warns that no aid in the form of food or fuel is reaching Gaza, something “disastrous for the humanitarian response,” says Louise Wateridge, spokesperson for this agency. The area around Kerem Shalom, which Israel claims to have reopened, “has ongoing military operations and is an active war zone. We are hearing continuous shelling in this area throughout the day,” she adds. Israel has released a video recorded with a drone showing the movement of trucks in Kerem Shalom.

“Without fuel, all humanitarian operations will stop” and “hospitals in southern Gaza only have three days of fuel left, meaning services could soon stop,” warns Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Organization. of Health (WHO). One of the three hospitals in Rafah, Al-Najjar, is no longer functional due to the ongoing hostilities in its vicinity and the military operation in Rafah, Ghebreyesus added from his X account.

Faced with the uncertainty of a possible more forceful military advance, some 10,000 people have abandoned their homes or tents since Monday towards a place they consider safer, according to UNRWA data. That morning Israel issued evacuation orders to the inhabitants of several neighborhoods in eastern Rafah.

But mistrust reigns because the last seven months have passed in some cases in constant flight from the bombs. In Gaza there is no safe area, according to citizens and humanitarian organizations, denying the maps with which Israel tries to guide the evacuations, which in reality are forced population movements that the UN considers illegal. Israel has specifically referred these days to the Al Mawasi camping area, north of Rafah.

“In Rafah I saw amputee children living in tents because the hospitals were full. These children are now told, along with many others, to go to areas like Al Mawasi, considered safe. There, Unicef ​​reported a couple of weeks ago on the case of a boy, Mustapha, who left home to get parsley for dinner and was shot in the head. “Mustapha was murdered in the so-called safe zone of Al Mawasi,” James Elder, spokesperson for that UN agency, denounced from Geneva on Monday.

Mohamed Al Najjar sends EL PAÍS a video of a deserted road in Rafah, with businesses closed, full of garbage and with the wind moving plastic bags among the squawking of birds. “This street was very populated until two days ago!”

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