“We will also reach Rafah.” Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has cleared up possible doubts about his army's intentions in the past few hours. It is clear from their announcement that they are determined to attack and deploy every inch of the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, there have been no concrete announcements from any of the conflicting parties that would come any closer to a ceasefire. Rafah, at the southern end of the Palestinian enclave and on the border with Egypt, has become a buffer for more than a million people fleeing Israeli attacks. Displaced people continue to arrive in a steady trickle amid a desperate flight as Israel has increased military pressure on neighboring Khan Yunis, the United Nations warns.
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Amid this exodus, “Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair and we fear what could come next,” warned Jens Laerke, spokesman for the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs, this Friday, pointing to the very serious consequences facing the land military could The operation can expand to the south. There is growing fear among the population about the announcements made by the Israeli authorities in the last few hours. “In every corner of Rafah you can find internally displaced people sleeping on the streets without protection and suffering from the heavy rain and cold. “We can't take it anymore, we are very tired,” says Karim, an NGO worker who prefers that no further data about him be published in news reports for security reasons.
“I would like to express our deep concern about the escalation of hostilities in Khan Younis, which has led to an increase in the number of internally displaced persons seeking refuge in Rafah in recent days,” Laerke warned from Geneva in statements collected by the agency . Portal. The possible arrival of Israeli troops' tanks and infantry in Rafah is seen as the final straw for a population of more than a million displaced people who cannot escape further down where they encounter the border wall with Egypt . “We are very afraid of it. It would be something terrible for us. I don't even want to think about what could happen to us if they enter Rafah. “It could be a massacre.” They survive, battered by four months of war, without a roof to shelter under, with a collapsed health system, with little food or water, without electricity or fuel and at the expense of the harshness of winter.
Several children take refuge in a makeshift tent in a camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, this Friday.HAITHAM IMAD (EFE)
Late on Thursday, Yoav Gallant announced in a statement that his troops had achieved the objectives set in Khan Yunis, where ground operations have been the focus for weeks and where Hamas infrastructure is believed to be dismantled. In any case, Israel has still not captured or announced the death of any of the top commanders of the Islamist network that would have its main bastion in this city. “We are carrying out our missions in Khan Yunis and will also reach Rafah to eliminate the terrorists who threaten us,” the minister said.
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Karim, in his mid-thirties, painfully explains how, in addition to his two daughters, they are expecting the birth of a son in two months. “My wife is seven months pregnant. We can't even find clothes for the baby. “I've been looking for it in the markets for more than a month, but nothing.” He lives in uncertainty and constant fear that something could happen to his daughters, his wife, his sister, his parents… “We don't want to be stripped naked and walk through the streets without clothes,” he says, referring to scenes captured on video by the Israeli military of mass arrests in other areas of the Gaza Strip, in which people were forced to strip down to their underwear. “That's not humane. We are human beings like the rest of the world, we have rights, we have dignity. “This is unbelievable,” he adds, outraged by what he sees as the passivity of the international community.
Exhausted, hungry, traumatized
Rafah represents the last piece of land where the population can find refuge, although the Israeli army's air strikes are also arriving there. More than half of the enclave's population, which amounts to 2.3 million residents, is gathered in this area of Gaza. Since the war began on October 7, 2023, the army has been sweeping them down from the northern area, especially since it launched the military ground operation on the 27th of the same month. In recent hours, fighting continued across the Gaza Strip and the Israeli army said it had killed more than 20 “terrorists”, destroyed its infrastructure and intercepted weapons.
Displaced Palestinians line up to refill their water jugs at a refugee camp near the Rafah border on Friday. Mohammed Talatene (DPA/Europa Press)
“The population is enduring unimaginable circumstances. They are exhausted, hungry and traumatized. Families have lost everything and have been repeatedly displaced. “Thousands of people lack adequate shelter against cold and rain while diseases spread,” denounced the World Health Organization (WHO) this Friday on the social network X (formerly Twitter). “More than 100,000 people in the Gaza Strip are dead, injured or missing and presumed dead,” estimated the director of that UN agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on Thursday. That figure includes the more than 27,000 people authorities in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip consider dead.
“I don’t know what can happen to me and my family. I'm very afraid of losing one of them. If I had the opportunity to leave the Gaza Strip with my family members, I would take it without a second thought,” says Karim.
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