Tel Aviv, Israel CNN —
The Israeli military has presented the war cabinet with a plan to “evacuate the population” of Gaza from combat zones, while warning that an offensive on the southern city of Rafah will soon take place.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said he had ordered the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to develop a plan to evacuate civilians from Rafah, where more than a million people are crowded.
This “upcoming operational plan” was submitted for approval on Monday, Netanyahu's office said, although Rafah was not mentioned by name in the Monday statement. CNN has not seen a copy of the plan.
Fear is growing in Gaza and in the international community about the IDF's planned offensive against Rafah, which lies on the closed border with Egypt.
The city has become home to most of the displaced Palestinians as the Israeli military advanced south through the enclave, but these civilians appear to have nowhere else to go.
Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images
Israel has already attacked Rafah with almost daily airstrikes while also preparing for a ground offensive in the city.
The US has warned it would not support a campaign against the city without a “credible” plan to evacuate Palestinians.
The statement from Netanyahu's office on Monday said the Cabinet had also approved a plan to provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza “in a way that will prevent the looting that has taken place in the northern strip and other areas.”
The Israeli leader pledged to advance efforts in Rafah in an interview on CBS' “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
“We cannot leave the last Hamas stronghold without taking care of them,” Netanyahu said, adding that Hamas's last “command stronghold” was in Rafah and four commando battalions were concentrated there. CNN cannot independently verify these figures.
He told the program that once Israel “begins the Rafah operation, the intense phase of fighting will only take weeks to complete, rather than months, even weeks to complete.”
And he stated that he had asked the IDF to present a “dual plan”; one to “facilitate the evacuation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” and another “to destroy the remaining Hamas battalions.”
“If we have a deal, it will be a little delayed. But it will happen,” Netanyahu said, referring to a possible deal that would include a humanitarian pause in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages in Hamas. “If we don’t have a deal, we’ll do it anyway. It has to be done,” he said.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that negotiators had agreed on the broad outlines of a possible deal and that talks would continue on Monday in Qatar.
These negotiations are taking place even as indirect talks with Hamas continue. Crucially, Hamas has not yet signed off on this possible framework and a possible final agreement is days away at the earliest as negotiators continue to work on the actual details.
“The representatives of Israel, the United States, Egypt and Qatar met in Paris and agreed among the four of them on what would be the outlines of a hostage agreement for a temporary ceasefire. I won't go into detail because the details are still being worked out,” Sullivan told CNN's Dana Bash.
“There will have to be indirect talks between Qatar and Egypt with Hamas because ultimately they have to agree to the release of the hostages. That work is ongoing,” Sullivan added. “And we hope that in the coming days we can get to a point where there is actually a firm and final agreement on this issue. But we’ll have to wait and see.”