Palestinians fear assault on last refuge

Israeli forces shelled the outskirts of the last refuge on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip yesterday, where the displaced, penned against the border fence in their hundreds of thousands, said they feared a new assault with nowhere left to flee.

More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are now homeless and crammed into Rafah. Tens of thousands more have arrived in recent days, carrying belongings in their arms and pulling children on carts, since Israeli forces launched one of the biggest assaults of the offensive last week to capture Khan Younis, the main southern city, just to the north of Rafah.

• Over half of Gaza’s 2.3m residents now crammed into Rafah
• Wind and cold weather worsen misery of displaced families
• Death toll in enclave now 27,131

If the Israeli tanks keep coming, “we will be left with two choices: stay and die or climb the walls into Egypt”, said Emad, 55, a businessman and father of six, reached on a mobile phone chat app.

“Most of Gaza’s population are in Rafah. If the tanks storm in, it will be a massacre like never before during this war.”

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said late on Thursday that troops would now turn to Rafah, which along with Deir al-Balah just north of Khan Younis is among the last remaining areas they have yet to storm in an almost four-month assault.

As the only part of Gaza with access to the limited food and medical aid trickling across the border, Rafah and adjacent parts of Khan Younis have become a teeming warren of makeshift tents clinging to the winter mud.

Wind and cold weather added to the misery, blowing tents down, flooding them and the ground between them, reports Reuters.

The United Nations humanitarian office yesterday voiced concern about the hostilities in Khan Younis that have forced more people to flee to Rafah, describing the border town as a “pressure cooker of despair”.

“Thousands of Palestinians have continued to flee to the south, which is already hosting over half the population of some 2.3 million people. … Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair, and we fear for what comes next,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Meanwhile, health officials in the enclave said yesterday the confirmed Palestinian death toll had risen to 27,131 with thousands more dead still lying under the rubble.

After a truce proposal agreed with Israeli negotiators was presented to Hamas on Thursday, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said there were hopes of “good news” about a fresh pause to the fighting “in the next couple of weeks”.

Ansari said a truce plan thrashed out with Israeli negotiators by Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators in Paris earlier this week had received a “positive” initial response from Hamas.

But a source close to Hamas told AFP: “There is no agreement on the framework of the agreement yet — the factions have important observations — and the Qatari statement is rushed and not true.”