{"id":15340,"date":"2024-02-10T12:49:27","date_gmt":"2024-02-10T12:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/10\/netanyahu-directs-israeli-military-to-draw-up-plan-to-evacuate-more-than-one-million-people-from-rafah-as-offensive-looms\/"},"modified":"2024-02-10T12:49:27","modified_gmt":"2024-02-10T12:49:27","slug":"netanyahu-directs-israeli-military-to-draw-up-plan-to-evacuate-more-than-one-million-people-from-rafah-as-offensive-looms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/10\/netanyahu-directs-israeli-military-to-draw-up-plan-to-evacuate-more-than-one-million-people-from-rafah-as-offensive-looms\/","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu directs Israeli military to draw up plan to evacuate more than one million people from Rafah as offensive looms"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has directed the country\u2019s military to plan for the \u201cevacuation of the population\u201d from Rafah, his office said in a statement on Friday, ahead of an anticipated ground assault on the southern Gaza city. <\/p>\n

More than 1.3 million people are believed to be in Rafah, the majority displaced from other parts of Gaza,\u00a0according to the United Nations. <\/p>\n

Netanyahu on Thursday said that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would \u201csoon go into\u00a0Rafah, Hamas\u2019s last bastion.\u201d <\/p>\n

Many Palestinians have trekked through the enclave and taken refuge in the city as the IDF\u2019s campaign has moved south through Gaza. <\/p>\n

But it is unclear where next they could go; the city borders Egypt to the south, but the border into the country has been closed for months. <\/p>\n

In the statement, the Israeli Prime Minister\u2019s Office said that it was not possible to both eliminate Hamas and leave \u201cfour Hamas battalions in Rafah.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cOn the other hand, it is clear that a massive operation in Rafah requires the evacuation of the civilian population from the combat zones.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThat is why the Prime Minister directed the IDF and the defense establishment to bring to the Cabinet a dual plan for both the evacuation of the population and the disbanding of the battalions.\u201d <\/p>\n

Rafah is the last major population center in Gaza not occupied by the IDF. <\/p>\n

It has rapidly become home to a huge population of displaced Palestinians. Satellite images showed this week how a tent city in Rafah has swelled in size in just a few weeks, as more Gazans descend on the area to escape the IDF\u2019s campaign. <\/p>\n

In a statement Friday, the office of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the plan for military escalation and called a potential evacuation a \u201creal threat\u201d and \u201cdangerous prelude\u201d to the Israeli displacement of Palestinian people from their land. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe time has come for everyone to bear their responsibility in the face of creating another catastrophe that will push the entire region into endless wars,\u201d the statement said. <\/p>\n

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Rafah\u2019s makeshift tent city<\/span> Satellite image \u00a92024 Maxar Technologies<\/span> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe are praying to God that what happened in Gaza City does not happen in Rafah because if the same happens in Rafah we will have no place to go,\u201d Mohammad Jamal Abu Tour said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf we go to Gaza City or Khan Younis or El Nuseirat we are not going to find the supplies that were provided for us here in Rafah,\u201d he added. \u201cWe keep hearing that in Gaza City they can\u2019t find clean water and that they are eating grass, they drink from the sea, God help them.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mahmoud Khalil Amer,\u00a0who was\u00a0displaced from the Al Shati refugee\u00a0camp in northern Gaza, said he stayed in a tent near a cemetery in Rafah. \u201cWe are not living, the dead are better than us,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the United States State Department said Thursday that the US would not support an Israeli military operation in Rafah \u201cwithout serious planning.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cTo conduct such an operation right now with no planning and little thought in an area where there is sheltering of a million people would be a disaster,\u201d Deputy State Department Spokesperson Vedant Patel said at a press briefing Thursday. <\/p>\n

Later on Thursday, President Joe Biden offered one of his sharpest rebukes to date of\u00a0Israel\u2019s military conduct\u00a0saying the operation to go after Hamas had been \u201cover the top.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m of the view,\u00a0as you know, that the conduct\u00a0of the response in Gaza \u2013 in the Gaza\u00a0Strip \u2013 has been\u00a0over\u00a0the\u00a0top,\u201d Biden told reporters at the White House, describing his own efforts to open up Gaza so more humanitarian aid could flow in. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been pushing really hard \u2013 really hard \u2013 to get humanitarian\u00a0assistance into Gaza. A lot of innocent people are\u00a0starving. A lot innocent people\u00a0in trouble and dying. And\u00a0it\u2019s got to stop,\u201d Biden said. <\/p>\n

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) meanwhile said in a press release Thursday that Rafah could soon turn\u00a0\u201cinto a zone of bloodshed and destruction that people won\u2019t be able to escape.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has directed the country\u2019s military to plan for the \u201cevacuation of the population\u201d from Rafah, his office said in a statement on Friday, ahead of an anticipated ground assault on the southern Gaza city. More than 1.3 million people are believed to be in Rafah, the majority displaced from other <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15340","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}