Israel’s military says it conducted strikes in Rafah, rescued two hostages

Israel’s military said it rescued two hostages and carried out a series of strikes in southern Gaza in the early hours Monday local time, sparking confusion and panic in Rafah, where more than 1 million people have fled to escape conflict elsewhere in the Palestinian enclave.

The two hostages, Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Luis Har, 70, were taken from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak on Oct. 7, Israel’s military said, adding that both were in “good medical condition” and were taken for further medical examination in Israel.

The early-morning strikes came hours after President Biden stressed during a weekend phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there should be no military operation in Rafah unless there are plans in place to protect civilians. Israel has faced increasing pressure from allies and neighbors to halt plans for what it described as a massive operation there.

In a statement posted on Telegram early Monday, the Israel Defense Forces said it conducted “a series of strikes on terror targets in the area of Shaboura in the southern Gaza Strip,” adding that the strikes “have concluded.”

Gazans reported hearing bombing in the early hours from all directions.

“We woke up to the sounds of very violent bombardment from warplanes, helicopters and artillery in different places,” said Motaz al Aaaraj, a program officer for Project Hope, a humanitarian organization, in Rafah.

It was not immediately possible to verify the number of casualties. Reuters reported that 37 people were killed in the strikes, citing local health officials.

Israel’s military says it conducted strikes in Rafah, rescued two hostages

Netanyahu ordered the military to draw up plans to remove civilians from Rafah, his office said last week. And on Sunday, he struck a defiant tone, despite the warnings.

“Those who say that under no circumstances should we enter Rafah are basically saying lose the war,” Netanyahu said in an interview on ABC News’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

Pressed on the question of where Palestinian civilians staying in Rafah should go, Netanyahu referred vaguely to “plenty of areas” north of the city. Gaza — which is wedged between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea — is just 25 miles long and about 6 miles wide, and much of it has been destroyed or remains an active conflict zone.

Displaced Palestinians living in tent camps in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip put together a makeshift shelter to protect themselves from the rain earlier this month.

More than 1 million people have sought shelter in Rafah in recent weeks, including in sprawling tent camps, after fleeing intense Israeli bombardment elsewhere in Gaza. Overcrowding has forced families to sleep in the streets, and food is so scarce that some people have resorted to eating grass, the anti-poverty group ActionAid International said in a statement.

President Biden told Netanyahu in a call Sunday that a military operation in Rafah “should not proceed without a credible and executable plan” to protect civilians there, according to a White House readout of the discussion.

Biden moving closer than ever to a breach with Netanyahu over war in Gaza

The call came after Biden offered a sharp rebuke of Israel’s war in Gaza. On Thursday, in rare candid remarks, he said Israel’s conduct was “over the top.”

“A lot of innocent people are starving. A lot of innocent people are in trouble and they’re dying and it’s got to stop,” Biden said.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron also weighed in over the weekend, saying he was “deeply concerned about the prospect of a military offensive in Rafah.” E.U. foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf and Germany’s Foreign Ministry all warned that a ground incursion there would be catastrophic for the population.

Egypt, which borders Rafah, said on Sunday that an operation would have “dire consequences” and could forcibly displace more than 1 million Palestinians, according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry.

Concerns are mounting in Cairo that an Israeli offensive in Rafah would add to pressure on Egypt to open its border to Palestinian refugees — an outcome it has sought to avoid since the start of the war, fearing insecurity in Sinai, a sensitive military zone, and not wanting to be seen by its staunchly pro-Palestinian public as complicit in mass displacement.

Egypt has been reinforcing its border with Gaza, including by mounting barbed wire on the border wall last week, according to the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, a U.K.-based monitoring group with a team in northern Sinai.

Aid groups say a ground operation in Rafah will drastically worsen the desperate humanitarian situation. Amnesty International has said that if Israel’s removal order is enacted, it “may amount to the crime of forcible transfer.”

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Hamas said that an Israeli offensive in Rafah could threaten hostage exchange negotiations, Hamas’s media outlet quoted an official in the militant organization as saying. A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Thursday to carry on negotiations convened by Egypt and Qatar, aimed at reaching a cease-fire deal in Gaza that would involve the freeing of Israeli hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

Israel targeted a senior Hamas figure deep inside Lebanese territory in a strike on Saturday, according to an Israeli security official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the operation. The target, Hamas recruiter Basel Saleh, survived the attack, but at least two others were killed, the official said.

The Israeli military said it had uncovered a tunnel used by Hamas that passes beneath the main Gaza City headquarters of UNRWA. The head of the aid group, Philippe Lazzarini, said in a statement that Israel had not formally notified the agency about the discovery and that UNRWA was not aware of any tunnel infrastructure under the compound, which was evacuated on Oct. 12. The organization has been in crisis since Israel’s accusation that about a dozen of its employees played a role in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks.

One in every 100 people in Gaza was killed in the first 100 days of the war, a rate higher than any other armed conflict in the 21st century, according to a U.N. commission. “The ongoing war stands out as unprecedented in the scale of death, destruction, and suffering, with repercussions that will echo for generations to come,” said the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.

The body of Hind Rajab, the 6-year-old missing for 12 days since losing touch with rescue workers after her family car was fired on in Gaza, has been found, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said Saturday. The ambulance dispatched to reach her was also shelled, and the two paramedics inside were killed. Hind, the sole survivor of the attack in Gaza City, reached emergency dispatchers by phone on Jan. 29 and begged for hours to be rescued.

At least 28,176 people have been killed and 67,784 injured in Gaza since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.

Claire Parker and Heba Farouk Mahfouz contributed to this report.