With Israel’s insistence on invading the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, despite the ongoing negotiations with Hamas regarding a ceasefire and prisoner exchange, Washington renewed its emphasis on rejecting this military operation.
On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken confirmed Washington’s opposition to the Israeli attack on the crowded city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip during talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who pledged to move forward with this ground operation, according to what an American official said.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that the top US diplomat “reiterated the clear US position on Rafah,” two days after Blinken once again expressed his opposition to the attack due to concerns for civilians displaced to the city.
New area
These statements come as the Israeli army intends to create a “new area” in central Gaza to shelter Palestinians scheduled to be evacuated from Rafah, according to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, reported on Wednesday.
The Israeli newspaper also reported that the new area will be established on the outskirts of Nuseirat and Bureij, near an Israeli army corridor.
This information came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced yesterday, Tuesday, that the process of evacuating civilians from Rafah had begun, in preparation for launching a ground attack on the city.
However, Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), reported at the same time yesterday that the residents of Rafah have not yet been asked to evacuate the city, yet.
While the population evacuation process is expected to extend for about two to three weeks, according to previous Israeli estimates.
Many international organizations and Western countries, led by the United States, a close ally of Israel, expressed their concern for the safety of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians gathered in Rafah.
The United Nations has also repeatedly confirmed that there is no safe place in the entire Strip to shelter the displaced.
It is noteworthy that more than two million Palestinians were displaced to Rafah, as a result of the war that has been ongoing for seven months, where they live in miserable humanitarian conditions.
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