RAFAH: Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday insisted there was no “humanitarian crisis” in Rafah as he announced roughly 500, 000 individuals had been evacuated from the north Gaza town amid intense battle.
It occurred as Palestinians observed the 76th anniversary of the” Nakba,” when around 760, 000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes during Israel’s design in the 1948 war.
Israeli forces have battled and bombed Hamas militants in Rafah, a town in Gaza’s far-south, but conflicts have also erupted in northern and central places, which Israeli soldiers first entered months before.
US cautions that Israel risks being hampered by a combat activity for years have been fueled by the rise in urban fight in besieged Gaza.
However, his administration informed Congress of a fresh$ 1 billion arms package for Israel, according to official resources, despite previous risks from US President Joe Biden to withhold some arms sales due to Netanyahu’s repeated refusal to attack Rafah.
The European Union urged Israel to “immediately” ending its military presence in Rafah, warning that failing to do so would “inevitably place a large strain” on relationships with the alliance.
Netanyahu insisted there was no charitable crises in Rafah even as he announced that hundreds of thousands of people had been “evacuated.”
” Our sincere efforts are producing results. Nearly half a million people have been evacuated from the conflict areas so far in Rafah. The humanitarian crisis that was spoken on did not materialise, nor will it”, the leading said in a statement.
” Harder than the Nakba,”
The vision of desperate people carrying their little things through the rubble of devastated cities has evoked for some the activities of the 1948 Nakba, which Arabictranslates as” catastrophe.”
In a Nakba Day speech, Hamas claimed that” the Zionist occupation directly accounts for the continued suffering of millions of refugees in Palestine and the diaspora.”
The Islamist militant group claimed that” their legitimate right to return to the places they were displaced cannot get violated or relinquished.”
One displaced Gaza man, Mohammed albert- Farra, whose home fled their house in Khan Yunis for the southern region of Al- Mawasi, said:” Our’ Nakba ‘… is the worst ever.
It is “much harder than the Nakba of 1948.”
In cities across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, thousands marched to honor the time, waving Israeli colors, wearing keffiyeh hats, and holding up symbolic secrets as reminders of long-lost family homes.
Netanyahu has pledged to end Hamas and take the hostages who are still held in Gaza home.
Biden, a fervent supporter of Israel, has clashed with right-wing bird Netanyahu as a wave of protests against the Democratic senator have increased the pressure on the Democrat leader throughout the election time.
In a Wednesday interview with CNBC, Netanyahu addressed the conflicts, saying:” Yes, we do had a dispute on Gaza. Instead, on Rafah. However, we must carry out their obligations.
Washington has also consistently urged Israel to operate on a post-war solution for Gaza, and it backs the establishment’s push for a two-state remedy, which Netanyahu and his far-right friends despise.
US state department spokeswoman Vedant Patel said that, without a democratic plan for the future, Arab extremists” will keep coming back” trapping all factors in” this continuing pattern of murder”.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated on Wednesday that he would not support the establishment of an Israeli military presence in Gaza and that Israel must not be under human rule in the region.
The war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 assault on southwestern Israel which resulted in the deaths of more than 1, 170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP score of Jewish official statistics.
The insurgents also seized about 250 victims, 128 of whom Israel estimates remain in Gaza, including 36 the army says are useless.
Israel’s military retribution has killed at least 35, 233 people, mostly civilians, according to the Gaza health department, and an Israeli assault has brought severe foods shortages and the risk of drought.
” Civilians are starving,” he declared.
On Wednesday, the Israeli military reported that its aircraft had” struck and eliminated approximately 80 terrorist targets,” including military installations, missile launchers, and weapons depots.
Additionally, it reported fighting was taking place in the Zeitun region and in eastern Rafah and in northern Gaza’s Jabalia, where it claimed militants had been killed.
Additionally, Hamas’s armed wing reported that its fighters were staging clashes with troops in the Jabalia region, much of which has been reduced to rubble.
At least five people were killed, including a woman and her child, in two Israeli air strikes on Gaza City overnight, Gaza’s civil defence agency said.
At the city’s Al- Ahli hospital, a wounded man, his bare chest smeared with blood, lay on a cot while outside several men placed a shrouded corpse in the shade of a tree.
Before the army issued the all-clear, claiming to have intercepted a projectile fired from the Jabalia area, air raid sirens blared in southern Israel near the Gaza border.
US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators have pushed for a truce and hostage release deal for months, but the talks are now close to” a stalemate”, said Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al- Thani.
Since Israeli forces last week took control of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, Sporadic aid deliveries into Gaza by truck have slowed to a trickle.
After crossing Jordan through the occupied West Bank, another convoy carrying humanitarian relief goods was ransacked by Israeli right-wing activists on Monday.
Washington and London condemned the attack, and Josep Borrell, the head of EU foreign policy, said he was “outraged” by the assault at the time when hundreds of thousands of civilians are currently starving.
