‘Stop the killing, save lives,’ says father of Israeli hostageA group of Israeli protesters, including families of hostages, gathered in Tel Aviv to demand the Israeli government accept the tentative ceasefire proposal already agreed upon by Hamas. The protesters are calling on the government to bring their loved ones home and to put an end to the fighting.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that his war cabinet approved continuing an operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah in order to pressure Hamas to release Israeli hostages and achieve the country’s other war goals.
“The war cabinet unanimously decided that Israel continue the operation in Rafah to exert military pressure on Hamas in order to advance the release of our hostages and the other goals of the war,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
“In parallel, even though the Hamas proposal is far from Israel’s necessary demands, Israel will send a working delegation to the mediators in order to exhaust the possibility of reaching an agreement under conditions acceptable to Israel,” it said.
Netanyahu’s remarks came after Hamas said it had accepted a ceasefire proposal from mediators. The Israeli military said all proposals that would release hostages held in Gaza would be considered, while for now its operations were continuing in parallel.
Israeli forces struck Rafah on Gaza’s southern edge on Monday and ordered residents out of parts of the city, which has served as the last refuge for more than a million displaced Gazans.
WATCH | Palestinians left scrambling in Rafah:
‘I don’t know where I will go’Families in parts of Rafah are on the move, with few resources and little sense of where they will go, after being urged by Israel to relocate.
“We’ve asked civilians to move out of harm’s way. We’ve been extremely specific about the areas which we’ll be targeting,” government spokesperson David Mencer said.
Israeli bombardment of eastern Rafah areas continued throughout the day.
“They have been firing since last night, and today after the evacuation orders, the bombardment became more intense because they want to frighten us to leave,” Jaber Abu Nazly, a 40-year-old father of two, told Reuters via a chat app.
“Some families already left, others are wondering whether there is any place safe in the whole of Gaza.”
Overnight, Israeli planes had hit 10 houses, killing 20 people, Palestinian medical officials said. The Israeli military said it had struck the site in Rafah from which the previous day’s rocket had been launched at its troops.
Palestinians hold leaflets on Monday that were dropped by Israeli planes, calling on them to evacuate Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. (Ismael Abu Dayyah/The Associated Press)Instructed by Arabic text messages, phone calls and flyers to move to what the Israeli military called an “expanded humanitarian zone” about 20 kilometres away, some Palestinian families began trundling away in chilly spring rain.
Some piled children and possessions onto donkey carts, while others left by pickup truck or on foot through muddy streets.
Abdullah Al-Najar said this was the fourth time he had been displaced since the fighting began seven months ago, as families dismantled tents and folded belongings.
“God knows where we will go now. We have not decided yet,” he said.
Dr. Nick Maynard, a British surgeon trying to leave Gaza on Monday, said in a voice message from the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing into Egypt: “Two huge bombs have just gone off immediately outside the crossing. There’s a lot of gunfire as well about 100 metres from us. We are very unclear whether we will get out.
“Driving through Rafah, the tension was palpable with people evacuating as rapidly as they could.”
A senior official of Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that governs Gaza, told Reuters the evacuation order was a “dangerous escalation that will have consequences.”
“The U.S. administration, alongside the occupation, bears responsibility for this terrorism,” the official, Sami Abu Zuhri, told Reuters, referring to Israel’s alliance with Washington.
LISTEN | Ahmed Kouta, a Palestinian-Canadian nurse on what he’s seen in Gaza:
Palestinians flee parts of Rafah after Israeli army calls for evacuationPeople were on the move in Rafah on Monday after the Israeli army urged Palestinians to leave parts of the southern Gaza city.
Israel’s military said it had begun encouraging residents of Rafah to evacuate in a “limited scope” operation.
Lt.-Col. Nadav Shoshani, an army spokesperson, said some 100,000 people were being ordered to move to Al Muwassi, a makeshift camp of tents along the coast where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled in search of safety and live in squalid conditions. Shoshani would not say whether this was the beginning of a broader invasion of the city.
“It has been raining heavily and we don’t know where to go. I have been worried that this day may come, I have now to see where I can take my family,” one refugee in Rafah, Abu Raed, told Reuters via a chat app.
‘Devastating’ consequences: aid agencyWitnesses said the areas in and around Rafah to which Israel wants to move people is already crowded and there is almost no room for more tents to be added.
An Israeli offensive in Rafah “would be devastating for 1.4 million people” sheltering there, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on X, formerly Twitter, adding it would keep a presence in Rafah as long as possible to provide aid.
A displaced Palestinian girl looks out of a tent on a rainy day in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Monday. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)Seven months into its war against Hamas, Israel has been threatening to launch incursions in Rafah, which it says harbours thousands of Hamas fighters and potentially dozens of hostages. Victory is impossible without taking Rafah, Israel says.
The prospect of a high-casualty operation worries Western powers and neighbouring Egypt, which is trying to mediate a new round of truce talks between Israel and Hamas under which the Palestinian Islamist group might free some hostages.
The Rafah plan has opened an unusually public rift between Israel and Washington. Speaking to his U.S counterpart, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant linked Monday’s operation to the deadlock in indirect diplomacy, which he blamed on Hamas.
“During their discussion, Gallant discussed the efforts undertaken to achieve the release of hostages and indicated that at this stage, Hamas refuses the frameworks at hand,” the Israeli Defence Ministry said in a statement.
“Gallant emphasized that military action is required, including in the area of Rafah, at the lack of an alternative.”
Deadly exchange near border crossingAn Israeli broadcaster, Army Radio, said evacuations were focused on a few peripheral districts of Rafah, from which evacuees would be directed to tent cities in nearby Khan Younis and Al Muwassi.
Many residents in Rafah said they had received telephone calls to evacuate their homes in the targeted area, in line with the army announcement.
In an overnight aerial attack on Rafah, Israeli planes hit 10 houses, killing 20 people and wounding several, medical officials said.
Palestinians inspect the destruction following overnight Israeli strikes on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP/Getty Images)Four Israeli soldiers were killed on Sunday in a Hamas rocket attack near Rafah, at the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza, while Palestinian health officials said at least 19 people were killed by Israeli fire.
The White House said President Joe Biden spoke on Monday to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had agreed to reopen the crossing.
The crossing attack came as hopes dimmed for ceasefire talks in Cairo, with Hamas reiterating its demand for an end to the war in exchange for the freeing of hostages, and Netanyahu flatly ruling that out.
“Our just war in Gaza continues with the exact same goals: the release of all hostages and the defeat of Hamas,” Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz said on Monday on X, blaming the Palestinian group for the lack of progress in the Cairo talks.
WATCH | A tumultuous week on several U.S. college campuses:
Day 6152:46:40A Palestinian-Canadian nurse who chose to stay in Gaza reflects on what’s been lost after seven months of war
The war began after Hamas led a cross-border raid in Israel on Oct. 7 in which about 1,200 people were killed, including several Canadian citizens, and about 250 were taken hostage.
More than 34,735 Palestinians have been killed and more than 77,000 have been wounded in Israel’s assault since early October, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The tally does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but officials say at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.
