The Israeli government bowed to pressure from US officials and abandoned plans for a major offensive in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah; The idea of sending two military units there is no longer valid – the American newspaper “Washington Post” revealed.
The United States hopes that Israel’s actions will allow for a more limited measure Avoid massive casualties among Palestinian civilians.
The Israeli side, in turn, expects that the new operational plan in Rafah will not meet the opposition of US President Joe Biden – stressed the “WP” from Monday to Tuesday night.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said On May 6, the War Cabinet unanimously approved a military operation in Rafah to “put pressure on Hamas”. According to Israeli officials, the last four battalions of fighters of this Palestinian terror organization are holed up there.
A day later, the Israeli army captured the Palestinian enclave of the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Since then, a key route for humanitarian aid to Palestinians has been shut down. In the following days, Israeli and Egyptian authorities blamed each other for blocking the border crossing.
On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Jove Galant announced that the scope of the military operation in Rafah would be expanded.
The city, before the war, had about 250,000 inhabitants. About 1.4 million of the 2.3 million Palestinians have fled the Gaza Strip in recent weeks. As many as 800,000 people may have been evacuated from Rafah in recent days, according to data from US and UN officials. People. The international community has warned that an Israeli attack there would cause further civilian casualties and worsen the already catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas, which rules the territory, launched an armed invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, resulting in the deaths of approximately 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and approximately 240 abductions. More than 35,000 people may have died in Israel’s ongoing reprisals to date. Palestinians, and at least 90 percent of residents of the Gaza Strip, had to flee their homes.
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