GAZA, Palestine
The United States warned Israel Thursday that it risks “disaster” if it sends troops into Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah, where more than one million Palestinians have sought refuge.
The warning came after Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered troops to “prepare to
operate” in Rafah, the last major town in the Gaza Strip Israeli ground troops
have yet to enter.
Israel’s armed forces stepped
up its air strikes on the city on Thursday as fears of ground fighting grew
among the hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced from other parts of Gaza
who are now sheltering in tents and bombed out buildings.
UN chief Antonio Guterres
warned that a military push into Rafah “would exponentially increase what is
already a humanitarian nightmare.”
Heavy fighting raged on
despite international efforts toward a ceasefire in the bloodiest ever Gaza war
sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel.
State Department deputy
spokesman Vedant Patel said Washington had “yet to see any evidence of serious
planning” for a Rafah ground operation.
Noting that Rafah is also a
crucial entry point for humanitarian aid destined for Gaza, Patel said such an
assault was “not something we’d support.”
“To conduct such an operation
right now with no planning and little thought... would be a disaster.”
Secretary of State Antony
Blinken conveyed Washington’s concerns to Netanyahu directly during their talks
on Wednesday in Jerusalem, Patel said.
Publicly, the US top diplomat
warned that any “military operation that Israel undertakes needs to put
civilians first and foremost.”
Blinken left Israel without
securing a pause in fighting, wrapping up his fifth crisis tour of the Middle
East since the war started.
AFP journalists reported that
Israel carried out at least seven air strikes overnight in the Rafah area,
terrifying civilians crowded into shelters and makeshift camps.
“These strikes are proof there
is no safety in Rafah,” said resident Umm Hassan, 48, whose home was damaged in
the shelling of the nearby house of a local police chief.
“Look at the residential unit
they just blew up,” he said. “Regarding Netanyahu’s threat to invade Rafah, we
are people of faith. We are not worried. Life is one and God is one.”
Strikes and ground combat
continued across the Hamas-ruled territory, now in its fifth month of war,
where the health ministry said another 130 people were killed in 24 hours.
Blinken ended his fifth tour
of the region, where US forces have been drawn into related conflicts from Iraq
to Yemen.
On the ceasefire talks,
Blinken insisted he still saw “space for agreement to be reached” to halt the
fighting and bring home hostages.
Egypt was set to host new
talks with Qatari and Hamas negotiators hoping to achieve “calm” in Gaza and a
prisoner-hostage exchange, an Egyptian official said.
The Israeli prime minister had
rejected what he labelled Hamas’s “bizarre demands” in the talks.
Blinken told reporters that
Hamas’s counter-proposal had at least offered an opportunity “to pursue
negotiations.”
“While there are some clear
non-starters in Hamas’s response, we do think it creates space for agreement to
be reached, and we will work at that relentlessly until we get there,” he said.
Hamas said a delegation led by
Khalil Al-Hayya, a leading member of the group’s political bureau, was
traveling to Cairo.
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