Israel begins evacuating part of Rafah, Hamas decries 'dangerous
escalation'
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 [May 06, 2024]
By Mohammed Salem and Nidal al-Mughrabi
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) -Israel told Palestinians to evacuate parts
of Rafah on Monday in what appeared to be preparation for a
long-threatened assault on Hamas holdouts in the southern Gaza city
where more than a million people uprooted by the war have been
sheltering.
Instructed by Arabic text messages, telephone calls, and flyers to move
to what the Israeli military called an "expanded humanitarian zone" 20
km (7 miles) away, some Palestinian families lumbered out under chilly
spring rain.
Soon after midday in Gaza, several explosions were heard in east Rafah,
residents and Hamas media said, with an air strike targeting some houses
where lines of smoke and dust sprung up.
A senior official of Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that governs
Gaza, said the evacuation order was a "dangerous escalation" that would
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.
Israel's military said it had begun encouraging residents of Rafah to
evacuate in a "limited scope" operation. It gave no specific reasons nor
did it say if offensive action might follow.
Some Palestinians piled children and possessions onto donkey carts to
begin relocation, while others left by pick-up or on foot through
streets turned to mud and puddles by rains.
"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, Abu Raed, told Reuters via a chat app.
Witnesses said the areas in and around Rafah to which Israel wants to
move people are already crowded and there is almost no room for more
tents to be added.
"The biggest genocide, the biggest catastrophe will take place in Rafah.
I call on the whole Arab world to interfere for a ceasefire - let them
interfere and save us from what we are in," said Aminah Adwan, a
displaced Palestinian.
Seven months into its war against Hamas, Israel has been threatening to
launch incursions in Rafah, which it says harbors thousands of Hamas
fighters and potentially dozens of hostages. Victory is impossible
without taking Rafah, it says.
The prospect of a high-casualty operation worries Western powers and
neighboring 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.
Egyptian negotiators are intensifying talks to contain the current
escalation between Israel and Hamas, an unnamed "high-level" source was
quoted by Egypt's state-affiliated Al Qahera news TV as saying on
Monday.
The source said the ceasefire talks had hit an impasse after Hamas
attacked the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza on Sunday, killing four
Israeli soldiers.
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People flee the eastern parts of Rafah after the Israeli military
began evacuating Palestinian civilians ahead of a threatened assault
on the southern Gazan city, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel
and Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip May 6, 2024.
REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
RIFT
The Rafah plan has opened an unusually public rift between Israel
and Washington. Speaking to his U.S counterpart, Israeli Defense
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."
An Israeli broadcaster, Army Radio, said evacuations were focused on
a few peripheral districts of Rafah, from which people would be
directed to tent cities in nearby Khan Younis and Al Muwassi.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA said an Israeli
offensive in Rafah would be devastating for 1.4 million people
sheltering there, adding that it would keep a presence in the city
as long as possible to provide aid.
In an overnight aerial attack on Rafah, Israeli planes hit 10
houses, killing 20 people and wounding several, medical officials
said.
"Our just war in Gaza continues with the exact same goals: the
release of all hostages and the defeat of Hamas," Israeli Foreign
Minister Israel Katz said on Monday on X.
The war began after Hamas stunned Israel with a cross-border raid on
Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and 252 hostages taken,
according to Israeli tallies.
More than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed, 29 of them in the
past 24 hours, and more than 77,000 have been wounded in Israel's
assault, according to Gaza's health ministry.
On Sunday, a top U.N. official accused Israel of continuing to deny
the United Nations humanitarian access in Gaza, where the U.N. food
chief warned a "full-blown famine" has taken hold in the north of
the enclave of 2.3 million people.
While not a formal declaration, World Food Program Executive
Director Cindy McCain said, in an NBC News interview broadcast on
Sunday, that based on the "horror" on the ground: "There is famine,
full-blown famine, in the north, and it's moving its way south."
(Reporting by Reuters bureau; Writing by Michael Perry and Gareth
Jones; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Andrew Cawthorne)
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