Israel flattens Rafah ruins; Gazans fear plan to herd them there

Irish Times

28-04-2025

Israel
's army is flattening the remaining ruins of the city of Rafah on the southern edge of the
Gaza Strip
, residents say, in what they fear is a part of a plan to herd the population into confinement in a giant camp on the barren ground.
No food or medical supplies have reached the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip in nearly two months, since Israel imposed what has since become its longest ever total blockade of the territory, following the collapse of a six-week ceasefire.
Israel
relaunched its ground campaign in mid-March and has since seized swathes of land and ordered residents out of what it says are 'buffer zones' around Gaza's edges, including all of Rafah which comprises about 20 per cent of the Strip.
Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported on Saturday that the military was setting up a new 'humanitarian zone' in Rafah, to which civilians would be moved after security checks to keep out Hamas fighters. Aid would be distributed by private companies.
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The Israeli military had yet to comment on the report on Monday. Residents said massive explosions could now be heard unceasingly from the dead zone where Rafah had once stood as a city of 300,000 people.
'Explosions never stop, day and night, whenever the ground shakes, we know they are destroying more homes in Rafah. Rafah is gone,' Tamer, a Gaza City man displaced in Deir Al-Balah, further north, told Reuters by text message.
He said he was getting phone calls from friends as far away as across the border in Egypt whose children were being kept awake by the explosions.
Abu Mohammed, another displaced man in Gaza, said by text: 'We are terrified that they could force us into Rafah, which is going to be like a cage of a concentration camp, completely sealed off from the world.'
Israel, which imposed its total blockade on Gaza on March 2nd, says enough supplies reached the territory in the previous six weeks of the truce that it does not believe the population is at risk. It says it says it cannot allow in food or medicine because Hamas fighters would exploit it.
Gaza's Hamas-run officials ministry said on Monday at least 23 people had been killed in the latest Israeli strikes across the Strip.
At least 10, some of them children, were killed in an Israeli air strike on a house in Jabalia in the north and six were killed in an air strike on a cafe in the south. Footage circulating on social media showed some victims critically injured as they sat around a table at the cafe.
Talks mediated by Qatar and Egypt have so far failed to extend the ceasefire, during which Hamas released 38 hostages and Israel released hundreds of prisoners and detainees.
Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in Gaza, fewer than half of them believed to be alive. Hamas says it would free them only under a deal that ended the war; Israel says it will agree only to temporary pauses in fighting unless Hamas is completely disarmed, which the fighters reject.
In Doha, Qatar's prime minister said on Sunday that efforts to reach a new ceasefire in Gaza had made some progress.
The Gaza war started after Hamas-led fighters killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages to Gaza in the October, 2023 attacks, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel's offensive on the enclave killed more than 52,000, according to Palestinian health officials. − Reuters