RAFAH (AFP) – Israel battled Hamas in Gaza Monday, including in far-southern Rafah, despite United States (US) warnings against a full-scale invasion of the crowded city and of the threat of post-war “anarchy” across the Palestinian territory.
Clashes also raged in northern and central areas of the besieged Gaza Strip, AFP correspondents and witnesses said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Memorial Day event that “our war of independence is not over yet. It continues even today… We are determined to win this struggle”.
AFP correspondents reported helicopter strikes and heavy artillery shelling in the east of Rafah, as well as battles in northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp and Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood.
Israel’s Zionist regime last week defied international warnings, including from its top ally Washington, and sent tanks and soldiers into the east of Rafah, a city on the Egyptian border where some 1.4 million Palestinians had sought shelter.
This has sparked an exodus of nearly 360,000 people from Rafah so far, said the United Nations (UN) agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, which warned that “no place is safe” in the largely devastated territory.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that Washington had not seen any credible Israeli plan to protect civilians in Rafah, and that “we also haven’t seen a plan for what happens the day after this war in Gaza ends”.
“Israel’s on the trajectory, potentially, to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left or, if it leaves, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas,” he told NBC.
Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, also said that its group were engaged in ground battles in Rafah and Jabalia.
A strike overnight on a house in Rafah killed at least four people, said the city’s Kuwaiti hospital which had received the bodies.
Rafah residents Monday received more evacuation orders through phone calls and text messages, sending yet more people to start packing and leave their homes, witnesses said.
While the Zionist nation has vowed to destroy remaining Hamas forces in Rafah, the New York Times cited unnamed US officials as saying that both US and Israeli intelligence suggested the group’s leader Yahya Sinwar was not hiding there.
Sinwar – who has not been seen since October 7 – “most likely never left the tunnel network” under southern Gaza’s main city Khan Yunis, the Times said.
The war and siege have displaced most Gazans, many multiple times.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said in a post on X on Sunday that Israel’s latest evacuation orders were “forcing people in Rafah to flee anywhere and everywhere”. Umm Mohammed Al-Mughayyir, who has had to move her family seven times to escape the fighting, said: “We have reached a point where we wish for death.”
Residents were told to head to the Al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone” on the coast northwest of Rafah, though aid groups have warned it is not ready for an influx of people.
Spokesman for the Gaza crossings authority Hisham Adwan, told AFP on Sunday the Rafah crossing with Egypt has remained closed since Israeli troops seized its Palestinian side last Tuesday, “preventing the entry of humanitarian aid”. The Health Ministry said yesterday that Gaza’s health system is “hours away” from collapse, after fighting has blocked fuel shipments through key crossings.
Israel’s military said on Sunday it had opened a new border crossing into northern Gaza as “part of the effort to increase aid routes”.
In a sign of growing regional tensions, Egypt – the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel, in 1979 – said it would formally support an International Court of Justice case brought by South Africa, accusing Israel of genocidal acts in the war.
