Israel Sets Deadline for Rafah Ground Offensive Within Weeks

Israel gave Hamas a Ramadan deadline to return the hostages held in Gaza or face a ground offensive in Rafah, the first timeline it has provided for looming operations in the city that have become a source of tension with the U.S.

“The world must know and Hamas leaders must know if our hostages are not home by Ramadan the fighting will continue and expand to Rafah,” Israeli war-cabinet member Benny Gantz said Sunday.

Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, is set to begin around March 10 and has in recent years been a flashpoint for violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Israel has attacked Rafah—where more than one million Palestinians are sheltering—with airstrikes in recent weeks and threatened to send in troops, as heavy fighting continues around Khan Younis. Israel says the two cities are Hamas’s last strongholds in the strip and it thinks hostages are being held there. Last week, Israel rescued two hostages from a residential area of Rafah.

The Biden administration has warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against conducting an operation without a credible plan to ensure the safety of civilians in the city that had a prewar population of 300,000. Netanyahu at the weekend said that “there is a lot of space north of Rafah” to evacuate civilians. “There will be space for evacuation…We need to make sure this is done in an organized way,” he said.

The Ramadan deadline may be part of efforts by Israel to increase pressure on Hamas to reach a hostage deal, analysts said. Still, it puts into focus the holiest month in Islam, during which Israel normally loosens restrictions on Muslim Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank to visit the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The mosque sits on top of the Temple Mount, one of the holiest sites in Judaism. Violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police during the period, however, in recent years have marred events marking Ramadan.

A spokesman for Hamas didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Last week, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said attacks on Rafah were “a criminal step driven only by Netanyahu’s personal motives, through which he seeks to save himself and evade the consequences of any cessation of aggression, by escalating further in the blood of Palestinian civilians.”

Any ground offensive would likely severely hamper further aid for Gazans in Rafah, where a food crisis is already taking hold. Ghada Zaki, 23, who is in the Al-Remal neighborhood of Rafah, said she and her family were starving after the flour and animal feed they were eating ran out. Hunger and desperation have caused fights to break out between Gazans over aid deliveries, she said.

“We eat once a day. If we are lucky, we manage to get some rice, if not, one slice of bread that’s made of animal feed and tastes awful,” she said, adding that going further south for supplies is too dangerous.

Israel has warned for weeks it is preparing to enter Rafah, where more than half of the population of Gaza is sheltering in around 20% of the strip, but its government has faced international criticism for the plan because of the toll it could take on civilians. The Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza is one of two entry points for aid into the territory; a ground operation could further frustrate already stilted deliveries of food, water and medical supplies.

Israel is pursuing twin goals of eliminating Hamas from Gaza and freeing the dozens of hostages still held there after the Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities. Health authorities in Gaza said Monday that more than 29,000 people had been killed in the war triggered by those attacks. That figure doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.

On Sunday, Netanyahu said that he hoped to reach a deal to free hostages soon. “But deal or no deal, we have to finish the job to get total victory,” he said.

Around 130 hostages taken during Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack are still in Gaza, including at least 30 whom Israel says have died. Their families have increased pressure on the government to negotiate their freedom and criticized Israel’s decision not to send a delegation to Cairo for cease-fire talks. On Monday, families of the hostages protested outside Gantz’s home, where he came out to speak with them.

“Most likely [they will be returned] through a deal, and where there are other options to do this while ensuring the safety of the hostages, that is what we will do,” Gantz said.

The majority of the remaining hostages are Israeli, including dual nationals, according to Israel, which has shared an assessment with U.S. and Egyptian officials that as many as 50 of those still held could be dead.

Gantz also said Monday that Israel would introduce security measures during Ramadan given the conflict in Gaza after recommendations by security forces.

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for maximum measures to keep Palestinians from the West Bank away from Al Aqsa. An aide to Ben-Gvir said the minister had proposed barring entry of Palestinians from the West Bank to the holy site entirely during the month.

Israeli government officials who participated in the discussion over the proposed restrictions said Ben-Gvir’s position had been rejected but that no final decision had been made on the level or nature of the restrictions.

“The prime minister made a balanced decision which allows for freedom of worship under the restrictions of security needs that are determined by the professionals,” the Israeli prime minister’s office said, without elaborating.

Anat Peled, Abeer Ayyoub and Saleh al-Batati contributed to this article.

Write to Thomas Grove at [email protected]