Attack on Rafah is 'inevitable', says Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Any agreement with Hamas would only delay it.
Israel is considering an “evacuation plan” for civilians from unspecified parts of the Gaza Strip.
The military presented the war cabinet with a plan to evacuate people from “combat zones,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement issued Monday. The proposal comes as the Israeli military prepares for a long-threatened offensive on the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1.4 million people are trapped.
The war cabinet on Sunday night discussed the “plan to evacuate the population from the combat zones in the Gaza Strip” and “the next operational plan,” the prime minister's office said.
However, the details are not confirmed. The brief statement did not specify that the plans were related to the planned ground invasion of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza's 2.3 million residents have been forcibly displaced.
“This is a dual action plan. One, for Israel's ground invasion in Rafah, and two, an evacuation plan for the nearly 1.5 million Palestinians seeking refuge in Gaza's southernmost city,” said Al Jazeera's Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Jerusalem. It's busy.
Only path to 'total victory'
Reports of the plans came shortly after the heads of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and the internal security service Shin Bet returned from the latest truce talks in Paris. They reportedly had in hand the outline of a possible deal with Hamas that calls for a pause in fighting of up to six weeks to facilitate an exchange of Palestinian prisoners and Israeli captives.
The framework has been presented to Hamas, but the group has not yet commented publicly. An Israeli delegation will be sent to Qatar in the coming days to continue negotiations.
Al Jazeera's Salhut noted that Netanyahu has said that no deal that is imminent has yet been agreed upon.
“Also, when we talk about Rafah, the Israeli prime minister – in statements to the American media – has said that if there is an agreement, the ground invasion will be delayed. If there is no agreement, the ground invasion would occur sooner,” he stated.
“But no matter the outcome, Israel's ground invasion of Rafah, despite all international criticism and condemnation, will go ahead because, according to him, it is the only way to achieve 'total victory' over Hamas.”
'Same page'
Amid the plans and talks, the Israeli ground invasion of southern Gaza continues in Khan Younis, and bombs have continued to fall on Rafah and other areas in the besieged enclave, where around 30,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7. .
Netanyahu told US broadcaster CBS on Sunday night that once the Rafah invasion begins, the “intense phase” of fighting will take weeks to complete. He said “we are on the same page as the United States” about the need to evacuate civilians.
“The reason you have that population in Rafah is because we actually took them out of other combat zones that we had, that's why they are there. So now there is room for them to go north of Rafah, to the places where we have already finished fighting.”
The Israeli leader also reiterated the claim that Tel Aviv has no plans to push Palestinians from Rafah to the border with Egypt.
Satellite images and reports have indicated that Egypt has been building a fortified buffer zone that could potentially house tens of thousands of Palestinians who could be forced into its borders by an Israeli attack, but Cairo has denied this.
Egypt has also threatened that more than four decades of peace with Israel could be in jeopardy if the Rafah invasion occurs.
According to Netanyahu's office, a separate plan to “provide humanitarian assistance” has also been presented to the cabinet, which is supposedly designed to “prevent the looting that has occurred in the Northern Strip and other areas.”
Aid convoys have had difficulty passing through Rafah and reaching other areas after Israeli forces attacked and killed Palestinian police officers who were trying to help aid convoys navigate through hungry and desperate crowds.
