According to Palestinian sources, dozens of Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks during a hostage rescue operation in the area of the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. The Hamas-controlled health authority reported at least 70 dead and more than 160 injured. The information could not initially be independently verified.
For the first time since the Gaza war began more than four months ago, the Israeli army managed to free two civilian hostages in Rafah overnight. At the end of October, special forces had already freed a female soldier. According to the army, the two freed men are 60 and 70 years old and are in good condition.
Palestinian eyewitnesses reported that during the night there was heavy fighting between extremist Palestinians and soldiers in the Rafah area, as well as serious Israeli attacks.
The Islamist terrorist organization Hamas spoke in a statement of “massacres” of women, children and elderly people who had previously fled from other parts of the Gaza Strip. Hamas put the number of deaths at more than 100 in the attacks.
Planning for the offensive obviously still takes time
US media had previously reported that Israel’s army had not yet completed planning a military offensive on Rafah. It will “probably take some time” and has not yet been presented to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the New York Times quoted Israeli officials and analysts as saying. The strategy for an offensive on the city bordering Egypt, where hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people have sought protection, is “very complex.”
Israel’s plan has met with international criticism. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) warned that this would be “a humanitarian catastrophe.” US President Joe Biden called for a convincing concept for the protection of the civilian population there.
Biden’s government has also expressed concerns to Israel about the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which begins on March 10, the New York Times reported, citing two Israeli officials. An attack on Rafah during Ramadan could be seen as particularly provocative by Muslims in the region and beyond, it said. The Israeli media had previously said that Netanyahu assumed that Israel only had around a month due to international pressure and that the offensive on Rafah would therefore have to be completed by the beginning of Ramadan.
Egypt fears an influx of fleeing Palestinians
Netanyahu ordered the army on Friday to prepare an offensive on Rafah. “It is impossible to achieve the war goal of eliminating Hamas if four Hamas battalions remain in Rafah,” he said. The army should therefore prepare the evacuation of civilians. According to eyewitnesses, Israel has already attacked targets in the city from the air on several occasions. Israeli ground troops have not yet been deployed there. Egypt fears that a massive military operation in Rafah could lead to a rush of desperate Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Avi Poet from Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party suggested that residents of the Israeli-sealed Gaza Strip could be relocated to an area west of Rafah along the coast, the New York Times reported. Yaakov Amidror, a former general and national security adviser, also sees other options, including some areas in the center of the coastal strip where the military has not yet advanced. The nearby city of Khan Yunis could also be an option once Israel has ended the military operation there against Hamas, it said.
The federal government is once again calling for protection of the civilian population
In view of the announced military offensive in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Germany has once again urgently called on the Israeli government to protect the Palestinian civilian population there. “We are very concerned about the situation in Rafah. There are over a million people there in a very small space, (…) who are seeking protection there from the military operations and who basically have nowhere else to go,” said a spokesman of the Foreign Office in Berlin. What Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock explained at the weekend applies: Before there are further major offensives on Rafah against Hamas, Israel must clearly explain “where and how these people can find protection – and effective protection.”
According to the spokesman, Baerbock wants to set off on her fifth trip to Israel this Wednesday and her sixth trip to the region since the terrorist attack on Israel by the Islamist Hamas on October 7th. During the two-day visit to Israel, talks are planned with President Izchak Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and their counterpart Israel Katz.
The focus will be on the political path towards a new humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza in order to create a window of opportunity for the release of further hostages and negotiations on a sustainable ceasefire, the spokesman said. In addition, the difficult humanitarian situation in the southern border town of Rafah and in the Gaza Strip as a whole will also be discussed. There are currently no plans to visit the Palestinian territories or any other country in the region.
The Foreign Office once again called for more humanitarian deliveries to come to Gaza. “People must be better and more effectively protected and better and more effectively cared for,” emphasized the spokesman. There should be no expulsions from Gaza and the Palestinian territories. For this reason too, Israeli operations must ensure that the people there have effective protection.
When asked whether the Foreign Office had the impression that the German appeals had any influence on the Israeli government line, the spokesman said it was always good to keep in touch. There are intensive contacts with the Israeli partners. The minister’s visit this week also serves this purpose. “We are very clear in how we state our position, so to speak, and will continue to do so.”
