Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead with sending Israeli troops into Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, rejecting deep international concerns over the risks to more than a million Palestinians who have sought shelter there.
The prime minister said no amount of international pressure would stop Israel from realising all of its war aims.
“On the diplomatic front, until now we have succeeded in allowing our forces to fight in an unprecedented manner for five full months. However, it is no secret that the international pressure is increasing,” Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting.
“Those who say that the action in Rafah will not occur are those who also said that we would not enter Gaza, or act in Shifa or in Khan Younis, and that we would not resume the fighting after the pause [in hostilities in November].”
Israeli military officials say Rafah is Hamas’s last stronghold in Gaza, claiming thousands of militants as well as senior leaders are based there. They say leaving Rafah untouched would allow Hamas to retain control of parts of Gaza, exploit tunnels to Egypt and quickly rebuild its forces in the future.
However, Rafah is now home to more than 1 million people displaced from elsewhere in Gaza by the Israeli offensive launched after the attacks into Israel in October, in which Hamas killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seized about 250 hostages.
The city is also a logistics hub for the distribution of aid through Gaza, where famine looms and one in three children under the age of two in the north are acutely malnourished, according to the UN.
Joe Biden has said a Rafah invasion would be a “red line” without credible measures to protect civilians.
Israel has said it will create “humanitarian islands” to shelter the huge numbers now living in tented encampments or crowded shelters in Rafah. Speaking late on Sunday after a meeting with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, Netanyahu said civilians would not be left trapped in the city during an assault.
At a joint news conference in Jerusalem, Scholz stressed that comprehensive humanitarian aid for Gaza was essential and urgent. “We cannot stand by and watch Palestinians risk starvation,” he said.
The World Health Organization director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, urged Israel “in the name of humanity” not to go ahead with an assault, warning that “this humanitarian catastrophe must not be allowed to worsen”.
On Sunday an Israeli delegation travelled to Qatar to resume indirect talks for a ceasefire in Gaza and hostage release deal. Negotiations have been continuing intermittently for months but hopes of a breakthrough before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which started on Monday, proved unfounded.
Hamas has made at least one key concession, agreeing that a 40-day ceasefire and a hostage exchange could go ahead without an Israeli commitment to permanently ending the war.
The Israeli delegation is led by David Barnea, the director of the Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, which is being seen by some observers as a sign that the Israelis are prepared to do a deal and that Netanyahu’s bellicose rhetoric may be aimed in part at increasing pressure on Hamas.
The most recent Hamas ceasefire proposal called for an Israeli withdrawal from “all cities and populated areas” in Gaza during a six-week truce and for more humanitarian aid, according to an official from the Palestinian group.
Somewhere between 500 and 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including some serving long sentences for multiple murders of Israelis, would be exchanged for about 40 female, sick or elderly hostages.
The intensity of the Israeli military offensive in Gaza has eased somewhat in recent weeks but the death toll continues to rise. Israel’s campaign against Hamas has killed at least 31,645 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry.
At least 61 Palestinians died in the last 24 hours, health officials said, including 12 members of the same family whose house was hit in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza.
Leen Thabit, retrieving a white dress from under the rubble of the flattened house, cried as she told reporters that her cousin had been killed in the strike. “She’s dead. Only her dress is left,” Thabit said. “What do they want from us?”
Israel says Hamas deliberately uses civilians as human shields, which Hamas denies.
Shelling and clashes were reported in south Gaza’s main city of Khan Younis and elsewhere. The Israeli army said its forces had killed “approximately 18 terrorists” in central Gaza since Saturday.
Netanyahu has faced domestic pressure over the failure to free remaining captives held in Gaza. Protesters rallied in Tel Aviv on Saturday carrying banners urging a “hostage deal now”.
One demonstrator, Omer Keidar, 27, said: “The civilians … need to demand from their leaders to do the right thing.”
About half of the hostages seized during the 7 October attack were released during the truce in November, and Israel believes about 130 remain in Gaza. Between 30 and 50 are thought to be dead.
Netanyahu has portrayed criticism from overseas as an attack on Israel, though it has been principally directed at the veteran politician himself and his coalition government, the most rightwing Israel has ever had.
“To our friends in the international community, I say: is your memory so short? So quickly you forgot about October 7, the worst massacre committed against Jews since the Holocaust? So quickly you are ready to deny Israel the right to defend itself against the monsters of Hamas?
“No international pressure will stop us from realising all of the goals of the war: eliminating Hamas, freeing all of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israel.”
Netanyahu told CNN on Sunday that a speech by Chuck Schumer in which the US Senate majority leader called for new elections in Israel was “totally inappropriate”.
Schumer, a longtime supporter of Israel and the highest-ranking Jewish US elected official, said last week that Netanyahu was an obstacle to peace, criticised Palestinians who supported Hamas, and said it would be a “grave mistake” for Israel to reject a two-state solution.
Netanyahu said: “It’s inappropriate to go to a sister democracy and try to replace the elected leadership there.”
On Friday Biden described Schumer’s comments as a “good speech”, reflecting deep frustration in Washington with Netanyahu, his management of the war with Hamas, failure to do more to protect Palestinian civilians and perceived obstruction of aid deliveries in Gaza.
Both sides have something to gain politically from the public spat. The Biden administration has come under increasing pressure domestically to do much more to restrain Israel. Netanyahu, meanwhile, has used the recurrent arguments to rally his base by posing as a defender of Israel from global pressure, even from the country’s staunchest ally.
Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York and an outspoken critic of Netanyahu, said the Israeli leader’s comments fitted in with his efforts to find someone else to blame should Israel not achieve a clear victory in Gaza.
“He’s looking on purpose for a conflict with the US so that he can blame Biden,” Pinkas said.
On Wednesday 20 March, 7-8.15pm GMT, join Devika Bhat, Peter Beaumont and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad as they discuss the fast developing crisis in the Middle East.
