Terrified Gaza residents await an Israeli advance into the city they have fled to
Petrified Gazans in the cramped southern border town of Rafah tried to dodge the bombardment on Saturday as they prepared to flee an expected Israeli ground offensive. They feared the prospect of once again seeking safety in a place with few or no options for escaping the war.
Israeli officials have said the next phase in their effort to destroy Hamas will take place in Rafah, and on Friday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office has announced that “any strong action in Rafah would require the evacuation of the civilian population from combat areas.”
The Israeli government has not specified where the citizens are expected to go. Rafah lies along the border with Egypt, which has so far refused to accept Palestinian refugees, fearing for its own safety and concerned that the displacement could become permanent and undermine Palestinian aspirations for statehood.
On Saturday, Germany, Britain, Jordan and Saudi Arabia joined an international chorus of condemnation Israel's stated intention to expand its ground invasion into the city. Aid groups, the United Nations Secretary General and Biden administration officials have warned that an Israeli attack on Rafah would be disastrous.
“An Israeli army offensive on Rafah would be a humanitarian catastrophe,” said Annalena Baerbock, Germany's foreign minister. said in a statement on social media. “The people of #Gaza cannot disappear into thin air.”
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said on social media that he was “deeply concerned at the prospect of a military offensive in Rafah.”
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesman for the Palestinian Authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Saturday called on the United States to pressure Israel to stop what he called “the genocidal mass killings” of Palestinian civilians. Israel denies committing genocide or deliberately attacking civilians. The United States has strongly supported Israel since it launched the war in Gaza on October 7, following a Hamas-led attack in southern Gaza. Washington sends billions in weapons and other military aid to the Israeli army.
Netanyahu sought to allay public concerns on Saturday after Moody's, citing the long war with Hamas and the effect it had on Israel's finances, downgraded Israel's credit score for the first time in years. He called Israel's economy “robust” and said in a statement that the damage would be reversed after the war with Hamas ended.
The concerns – of devastating loss of life, disruption of humanitarian aid and further depletion of essential services – came as Israeli forces bombarded Rafah and other parts of southern Gaza with airstrikes, Palestinian news media reported. Several people were killed when Israeli airstrikes hit a vehicle and houses where displaced people were sheltering.
The continued airstrikes have frightened more than half of Gaza's 2.2 million residents, who have sought refuge in Rafah during four months of Israeli bombardments and warnings from the Israeli army to flee south. Fleeing fighting and destruction elsewhere, they have settled in a city where finding enough food, water and medicine has become a daily struggle.
Rents have skyrocketed and multiple families are sharing small apartments. Tent camps have taken over most open areas. Food and fuel have become so scarce that some people have started burning old clothes and book pages, heating canned beans and baking flatbread.
Overcrowding has already strained the area's resources, and new displaced persons from Gaza continue to arrive as fighting continues in the northern town of Khan Younis.
“It is very bad; the hygiene level is very low,” says Fathi Abu Snema, 45, who has been sheltering with his family at a UN school in Rafah since the start of the war. “Here we only eat canned food, which is anything but healthy. Everything else is very expensive.”
He feared that many would die if Israel invaded Rafah. “I'd rather die here,” he said. “There is no one safe place to go in Gaza. You can be killed anywhere, even on the street.”
Sana al-Kabariti, a pharmacist and skin care expert, fled Gaza City to Rafah, where both her home and clinic have since been destroyed, she said.
Even if the war were to end soon, she expects there would be little interest in her skin care services as people would focus on rebuilding their homes and lives, she said.
“I am worried about my future in Gaza,” said Ms. al-Kabariti, 33. “I really need to leave the Gaza Strip.”
More than 27,000 people have been killed by Israel in Gaza during Israel's four-month war, health authorities there say. The October 7 Hamas-led attack killed about 1,200 people and led to the kidnapping of more than 250 others, Israeli officials say.
Mr. Netanyahu signaled this week that Israel plans to move further south to what he described as the enclave's last Hamas stronghold. His office said in a statement that it would be impossible to achieve Israel's stated goal of crushing Hamas rule in Gaza without destroying the group's four battalions in Rafah. The army's “combined plan” should both “evacuate the civilian population and overthrow the battalions,” the statement said.
The crisis in Rafah reflects the dire conditions in the enclave. The World Food Program warned last month that the entire population of Gaza was suffering from crisis levels of food insecurity or worse. At the end of December, the agency said that nine in ten people were eating less than one meal a day, and the situation has worsened as aid groups struggle to deliver the little aid coming into Gaza.
Um Mohammad Abu Awwad, a 35-year-old mother, said her family living in the north of the area had been unable to find flour to buy for weeks. Even if flour were available, she said, a bag would cost about $200 — an impossible sum for their family, which has no income during the war.
Ms Abu Awwad said she has had to resort to grinding hay and fodder to replace flour. But even livestock feed was now becoming more expensive, she said.
“We want food and water to keep our children alive,” Ms. Abu Awwad said in a voice message last week. “The adults can survive, but the children die of hunger.”
Iyad Abuheweila, Abu Bakr Bashir And Aaron Bokserman reporting contributed.