GAZA STRIP: Israeli air strikes killed 117 Palestinians during the past 24 hours, the health ministry in Gaza Strip said on Saturday as over a million Palestinians cramming into the border city of Rafah await a full-blown offensive, with nowhere left to run.

Unlike in previous Israeli assaults on the besieged territory’s cities, when the military ordered civilians to flee south, no other relatively unscathed area remains in the tiny Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said it had ordered the military to develop a plan to destroy “four Hamas battalions dep-loyed there”, despite repeated warnings from several countries and aid agencies that civilians in large numbers could die.

With the latest addition of 117 killings over the past 24 hours, the death toll in the besieged territory has surpassed 28,000 during the past four months.

“Any Israeli incursion in Rafah means massacres, means destruction. People are filling every inch of the city and we have nowhere to go,” said Rezik Salah, 35, who had to flee his Gaza City home, with his wife and two children for Rafah in October after the Israeli resumed its agression against Palestinians.

With Israeli forces destroying swathes of towns with air strikes, artillery fire and controlled detonations, more than 85 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been rendered homeless.

Israeli forces were continuing “intensive” operations in Khan Yunis, northern and central Gaza as well as the border town of Rafah.

In Gaza City, the first major city that Israel’s operation targeted after ground forces invaded in late October, residents reported fierce fighting on Saturday.

The continued operation in Gaza City, months after it began and long after Israel said it was redeploying some troops to other areas, shows the limitations of any proposal to evacuate displaced people from Rafah to other parts of the enclave.

Doctors and aid workers are struggling to supply even basic aid to Palestinians sheltering around Rafah.

The Palestinian presidency said Netanyahu’s plans aimed to displace Palestinians from their land. “Taking this step threatens security and peace in the region and the world. It crosses all red lines,” said the office of Mahmud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority that exerts partial self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Also, the UN said Palestinian civilians in Rafah required protection, but there should be no forced mass displacement, which is barred by international law.

“No war can be allowed in a gigantic refugee camp,” said Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, fearing a bloodbath if Israeli troops move into Rafah.

“There is a sense of growing anxiety, growing panic in Rafah,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UNRWA agency. “People have no idea where to go.”

On the other hand, the United States also declared it would not back an assault that did not protect civilians, and had briefed Israel on a new US national security memorandum reminding countries receiving military aid to adhere to international law.

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2024