Israel orders partial evacuation of Rafah, fueling fears of new offensive

Israeli warplanes pounded targets in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah on Monday as the military told about 110,000 people sheltering there to evacuate. Many people began to leave, fearing that Israel was moving ahead with its long-planned invasion of Rafah, despite stiff international pressure.

The Israeli military began dropping leaflets in eastern Rafah telling people to move to what it called a humanitarian zone to the north, and said it would also notify people by text messages, phone calls and broadcasts in Arabic, and Monday night, the Israeli military carried out another round of what it called “targeted strikes” in Rafah against Hamas.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement late Monday that the war Cabinet had decided unanimously to “continue with its action in Rafah in order to exert military pressure on Hamas,” though it was not clear if that meant the latest airstrikes or something broader. A military spokesperson would not say when troops might enter the crowded city, but described the evacuation as part of Israel’s plans to dismantle Hamas and to free hostages taken Oct. 7.

Hours after the evacuation order, the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, issued a statement that the group had accepted a new cease-fire proposal from Qatar and Egypt, which have acted as intermediaries in peace talks. The group and Israeli officials said it was not referring to the proposal that Israel recently agreed to, leaving the conflict unresolved.

John Kirby, a White House national security spokesperson, declined to comment on the Hamas response, saying the United States was reviewing it. Israeli officials said they, too, would review the proposal, but the prime minister’s office said it did not meet Israel’s demands.

On Sunday, the talks appeared to reach an impasse, with Israel and Hamas still sharply at odds over the duration of any truce, and each side blaming the other for the failure to strike a deal. Hamas wants a permanent cease-fire while Netanyahu has expressed openness to only a temporary halt in the fighting and has said Israel would invade Rafah with or without an agreement.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, met with the relatives of the hostages Monday and told them that, “We are committed to achieving the war’s objectives, but Hamas’ rejection of any framework that would allow the release of the hostages compels us to start the Rafah operation,” according to a statement from his office.

“Even after the start of the operation in Rafah,” Gallant said, “all efforts to return the hostages will continue.”

Salama Marouf, the head of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, said in a statement Monday that the evacuation order showed that Israel “went into truce negotiations deceptively, without abandoning the idea of a broad aggression against Rafah.” He said the announcement was “a real test of the seriousness” of the countries that had warned against an invasion of the city.

Thousands of people were leaving Rafah on Monday, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which said that there had been “escalating Israeli airstrikes” in areas east of the city. In an interview, Dr. Marwan al-Hams, the director of Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, said his hospital had received the bodies of 26 people killed by Israeli fire and had treated 50 wounded people in the last day.

Israel’s closest ally, the United States, has urged it not to mount a major offensive into Rafah without a credible plan to protect civilians there, many of whom fled to the city as a last refuge from Israel’s airstrikes and ground invasion elsewhere in Gaza. The city is packed with about 1 million people, many of them living in makeshift tents. It is also a main entry point for aid from Egypt.

On Monday, President Joe Biden spoke to Netanyahu and “updated” him on the hostage talks, which were continuing Monday in Qatar, according to a brief summary of the call released by the White House. Biden also “reiterated his clear position on Rafah,” the White House statement said. Netanyahu’s office did not immediately release its own summary of the conversation.

After the Israeli military issued its evacuation order, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reiterated that he remained “deeply concerned” about an invasion, while Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry warned Israel against advancing what it called a “bloody and systematic” campaign to storm all of Gaza and displace its residents.

Workers for UNRWA, the main United Nations agency that aids Palestinians in Gaza, estimated on Monday that about 200 people an hour were fleeing the evacuation zone, said Sam Rose, the agency’s director of planning.

Israel was telling Palestinians to move to an area that includes Mawasi, a coastal section of Gaza it has advised people to go to for months, as well as areas farther north along the coast to Deir al-Balah. The military said the area had field hospitals, tents and larger supplies of food, water and medicine.

Israel was not calling for a “wide-scale evacuation of Rafah,” a military spokesperson, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said Monday. “This is a very specific scoped operation at the moment to move people out of harm’s way.”

But Rose said that the area would not be able to safely accommodate all the civilians who have sheltered in Rafah, in part because parts of it are littered with unexploded bombs.