‘Like a ghost town now’: Palestinians flee for safety amid Israel’s threat of Rafah invasion
By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Hatem Khaled
Gaza: As battles raged on the outskirts of Rafah on Wednesday with Israeli forces closing in, Palestinians were on the move again, abandoning neighbourhoods of the southern Gaza city and leaving them as ghost towns.
Hamas said its fighters were battling Israeli forces in the east and Islamic Jihad’s fighters attacked Israeli soldiers and military vehicles with heavy artillery near the airport. Israeli tank shells landed in the middle of Rafah wounding at least 25 people, medics said.
Displaced Palestinians arrive in central Gaza after fleeing from the southern Gaza city of Rafah.Credit: AP
“The streets of the city echo with the cries of innocent lives lost, families torn apart, and homes reduced to rubble. We stand on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe of unprecedented proportions,” Rafah Mayor Ahmed al-Sofi said, appealing to the international community to intervene.
Israel has threatened a major assault on Rafah to defeat thousands of Hamas fighters it says are holed up there.
Israeli forces tasked with destroying the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, on Tuesday seized the main border crossing between Gaza and Egypt in Rafah, cutting off a vital route for aid into the enclave, where malnutrition is widespread.
Palestinians arrive in central Gaza after leaving Rafah.Credit: AP
Israel’s military said it was conducting a limited operation in Rafah to kill fighters and dismantle infrastructure used by Hamas, which runs Gaza. It told civilians to go to an “expanded humanitarian zone” some 20 km away.
Three residents of Rafah told Reuters by telephone that tens of thousands of people have fled the city, which was seen as the last refuge for Palestinians who have been displaced many times over as Israeli air strikes pulverised Gaza.
People in the Jneina, Al-Shawka, Al-Salam and other neighbourhoods were ordered by the Israeli army to leave in anticipation of an assault. Some 1.4 million people have been sheltering in Rafah, raising the prospect of major casualties.
“Some streets look like a ghost town now,” said Aref, 35, who gave only one name, fearing Israeli reprisals.
“We don’t fear death and martyrdom but we have kids to care for and live for another day when this war ends and we rebuild the city,” he told Reuters via a chat app.
Many Rafah residents said they received warnings over their phones, and planes dropped leaflets.
Juliette Touma, director of communications of the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, estimated that about 10,000 Palestinians have left Rafah since Monday.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office put the number of people fleeing at tens of thousands and warned against a “massacre”.
Residents said tanks, which had moved in to take control of the crossing, had not entered built-up areas of the city and gun battles were still outside the city limits.
Suleiman Abu Kweik and his family are being displaced for the fourth time.
“Our homes have been destroyed. In Gaza [City] our house… they destroyed it. It was shelled. We went to Khan Younis. When they threatened Khan Younis, we went to Rafah,” he said.
The Israeli army has ordered tens of thousands of people to evacuate Rafah as it conducts a ground operation there. Credit: AP
Hamas said its fighters were battling Israeli forces in the east of Rafah. Lines of smoke from air strikes and tank shelling rose from places east of the city, residents said.
“Some people are still staying in their homes, even in the red zone areas, but I daresay that tens of thousands have already left Rafah, including from areas west of the city, that are not included in the occupation army warning,” said Mohammed Emad, 34, a father of three.
Abu Ahmed al-Najar said more than 60 families who lived in tent camps in Al-Jneina neighbourhood in Rafah had left the area late on Tuesday.
“Sixty-five families or 400 people are now homeless. People have no money, no tents, no one to support them,” he said.
Some people, like Mazen Ghadour, loaded their meagre belongings onto old trucks.
“This is the third or fourth time we have had to move. We are eight families. We live in fear. There is no safe place in the entire strip,” he said.
“God knows where we will go. We are going to the unknown. We are going to the unknown.”
The main maternity hospital in Rafah has stopped admitting patients, the United Nations Population Fund told Reuters on Wednesday.
Israeli soldiers work on armored military vehicles at a staging ground near the Israeli-Gaza border.Credit: AP
The UNFPA told Reuters that the hospital, Emirati Maternity Hospital, had been handling some 85 births each day out of a total of 180 births in Gaza each day prior to an escalation of fighting between Hamas and Israeli troops on Rafah’s outskirts.
Around half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been crowded into Gaza after fleeing other parts of the enclave during seven months of war.
US pressure on Israel
The Biden administration paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that the country was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on Rafah against the wishes of the United States, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday.
Austin confirmed the weapons delay, telling the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on defence that the US paused “one shipment of high payload munitions.”
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin: US is withholding weapons on concerns about Rafah.Credit: AP
“We’re going to continue to do what’s necessary to ensure that Israel has the means to defend itself,” Austin said. “But that said, we are currently reviewing some near-term security assistance shipments in the context of unfolding events in Rafah.”
The United States is reviewing other weapons packages to Israel after it paused one shipment of near-term assistance, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Wednesday, as Washington remained concerned over Israel’s possible Rafah offensive.
The war erupted on October 7 when Hamas militants crossed into Israel from Gaza and killed 1200 people and took more than 200 hostages back to the enclave, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel responded with air and artillery strikes which have killed nearly 35,000 people, Gaza health authorities say, and turned much of one of the most densely populated areas in the world into a wasteland of rubble.
Reuters