Israeli airstrikes on Rafah begin despite mounting ceasefire pressure

Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike east of Rafah on Monday.

Rafah’s fate hung in the balance on Monday after Hamas said it had accepted a ceasefire-for-hostage deal but Israel responded sceptically and carried out night airstrikes on Gaza’s southernmost city.

The more than a million Gazans taking refuge in Rafah were thrown into confusion by the day’s events. Israel issued orders for the evacuation of part of the city earlier on Monday, triggering an exodus of thousands of people. There were celebrations in the streets in the evening as Hamas’s announced it had accepted ceasefire, but then disappointment and bewilderment when Israel gave a tepid response and began bombing.

The Israeli military said on Monday it was conducting targeted strikes against Hamas in Rafah.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the terms that Hamas had agreed to fell far from meeting his government’s demands but he would he would dispatch a delegation for further negotiations through Egyptian and Qatari mediators. Some Israeli officials told reporters that Hamas had agreed to a “softened” version of a phased ceasefire plan Egypt had put on the table in recent days.

“This would appear to be a ruse intended to make Israel look like the side refusing a deal,” one Israeli official told Reuters, on condition of anonymity.

The US said it was also studying the proposal and would consult with allies. Matthew Miller, the state department spokesperson, pointed out that the CIA director, William Burns, was still in the region and in touch with all the relevant parties at the hostage and ceasefire talks.

“We continue to believe that a hostage deal is in the best interests of the Israeli people; it’s in the best interest of the Palestinian people,” Miller said. “It would bring an immediate ceasefire, it would allow increased movement of humanitarian assistance and so we’re going to continue to work to try to reach one.”

The main difference dividing the two sides at the hostages-for-ceasefire talks in Cairo last week was over the permanence of a ceasefire. Israel wants to reserve the right to take military action, particularly against the remnants of Hamas’s military wing in Rafah, after the ceasefire has run its course.

Talks in Cairo had appeared to stall over Hamas’s insistence that Israel should commit to making the ceasefire permanent at the outset of the agreement, rather than to negotiate its duration after the truce had taken hold. It was initially unclear whether Hamas had changed its position in announcing its acceptance of a deal on Monday.

Hamas officials were quoted as saying the plan they had accepted involved a ceasefire, reconstruction of Gaza, return of displaced people to their homes and a prisoner swap deal, and that the deal would involve three phases, each of 42 days each. That description left it unclear whether there were substantial differences to the proposal put on the table by Egyptian mediators last week.

As a potential ceasefire hung in the balance, witnesses described frightened families leaving Rafah on foot, riding donkeys, pushing trolleys or packing their belongings into overloaded trucks hours after reading leaflets dropped by the Israeli military that told residents and displaced people in eastern neighbourhoods to flee.

“An Israeli military offensive will lead to an additional layer of an already unbearable tragedy for the people in Gaza,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the head of Unrwa, the UN relief agency in the region. “It will make even more difficult to reverse the expansion of the already man-made famine.”

Joe Biden, the US president, spoke to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, on Monday afternoon and “reiterated his clear position” on Rafah, the White House said. US officials have repeatedly said Israeli had to present an adequate humanitarian plan for the more than million Gazans who have sought shelter in Rafah, and that the US would change its policy on the region if Israel went ahead with an offensive in the absence of such a plan.

Officials made clear on Monday that no such plan was possible in current circumstances so the US opposition to a Rafah attack was not likely to soften. It will be up to Biden to decide whether a US policy change would involve restrictions on arms supplies. US officials refused to comment on a report on the Axios news site that the a delivery of US-made ammunition due to ship last week had been put on a temporary hold.

In the clearest sign yet of Israeli intent to press ahead with an offensive, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they had broadcast instructions through “announcements, text messages, phone calls and media broadcasts in Arabic” telling an estimated 100,000 residents of an eastern section Rafah to head to an “expanded humanitarian zone” on the coast.

“This is an evacuation plan to get people out of harm’s way,” an Israeli military spokesperson said. “This is limited in scope and not a wide-scale evacuation of Rafah.”

The Biden administration agrees with the UN and aid agencies that there is no safe area for the people in Rafah to escape to, given the wholesale destruction of Gaza after seven months of Israeli bombardment.

While the Israelis say the section of Rafah under evacuation orders is limited with an estimated population of 100,000, US officials think any military operation in that district would have a knock-on effect, terrifying many others across Rafah to flee.

Rafah has been sheltering more than a million people displaced from elsewhere in Gaza during the war and is a key logistics base for humanitarian operations across the territory. Dense tent encampments surround the city and have also already crowded al-Mawasi, the coastal zone about 3 miles north-east to which Israel has told people to evacuate.

A rocket barrage launched by Hamas on Sunday from Rafah against a military base near the Kerem Shalom checkpoint, which killed four soldiers, may have spurred the Israeli decision. US officials also pointed out that the targeted checkpoint was the main crossing point for humanitarian deliveries into Gaza.

The IDF spokesperson described the evacuation as “part of our plans to dismantle Hamas … we had a violent reminder of their presence and their operational abilities in Rafah yesterday”.

Israeli officials have repeatedly said a “decisive victory” requires the destruction of a substantial Hamas combat force they say is based in Rafah, and the capture or killing of top Hamas leaders thought be sheltering in tunnels under the city, possibly with dozens of hostages.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, tweeted: “Israel’s evacuation orders to civilians in Rafah portend the worst: more war and famine. It is unacceptable … The EU, with the International Community, can and must act to prevent such scenario.”

Humanitarian officials and displaced people already living in al-Mawasi describe acute overcrowding, inadequate food, limited fresh water and an almost total absence of sanitation. Israeli forces have bombarded targets in al-Mawasi at least twice in recent months.

The IDF has said it is expanding the “humanitarian zone” in al-Mawasi and providing additional tents and field hospitals.

Aid officials have long warned of massive disruption to the effort to stave off famine in Gaza in the event of a major Israeli offensive in the south. Any attack on Rafah would lead to “the collapse of the aid response”, the Norwegian Refugee Council said on Monday.

The death toll in Gaza from the Israeli military offensive is more than 34,500, mostly women and children. A reprisal strike on a house in Rafah reportedly killed at least three Palestinians. Israel accuses Hamas of using civilians as a human shield, a charge the militant Islamist organisation rejects.

The Hamas attack in October killed 1,200 mostly civilians in their homes or at a music festival in southern Israel. About 250 hostages were taken, of whom 105 were released in return for 240 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails during a short-lived truce in November.

Netanyahu has been under domestic pressure to make concessions to obtain the release of the hostages in Gaza but appears so far to have prioritised the demands of far-right parties, which have threatened to withdraw crucial support for his coalition if a ceasefire deal is signed now.