It has been hours since thousands of Palestinians poured into the streets of the Gaza Strip town of Rafah, crying and hugging each other as they began to believe that Hamas’ acceptance of a ceasefire deal had spared them an Israeli ground offensive.
But by Tuesday morning, many shelters in Rafah were out and about again, carrying sacks and mattresses in cars and donkey carts out of the city after Israel pounded them in a second night of airstrikes and signaled it would not accept the Hamas-approved deal.
The abrupt change in mood was just the latest traumatic twist for a war-weary population of more than a million people crammed into the southern city after Israel’s offensive in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack reduced much of the rest of the besieged Gaza Strip to rubble and laid ashes.
News Tuesday morning that an Israeli armored brigade had seized control of the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt, a key access point for food and other humanitarian supplies, sparked further concern.
“We had barely celebrated the news that Hamas had accepted a ceasefire agreement when we heard that Israeli tanks had rolled in,” said Mohamed Karraz, 28, a displaced person from Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip.
“Last night was very violent, with continuous bombardment and the roar of explosions and ambulance sirens.”
Israel bombed eastern parts of Rafah on Monday morning, sparking panic, but hours later Hamas announced it had accepted a hostage-taking deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar that would have led to an initial six-week pause in fighting. However, Israeli leaders soon said the text approved by the Palestinian group was different from the one they had previously accepted and carried out another night of airstrikes.
On Tuesday morning, Israeli planes dropped leaflets urging residents of five eastern districts to move to a coastal area west of Rafah because the Israeli military would “act with great force against terrorist groups in your areas.”
Om Udai Tabash, 44, said her family would return to their home in Khan Younis, in an apartment block whose roof was lost to Israeli bombing.
“At least we will die in our place,” she said. “There are no livelihoods in Khan Younis because the infrastructure has been destroyed, but the Israeli army will do the same here in Rafah. “If we have to die, it should be in our homes.”
Many people now living in Rafah have been displaced from the northern parts of the strip on multiple occasions. Some 1.4 million people, more than half of Gaza’s population, were crammed into a place where only 280,000 people normally live: crowded into schools, private homes and tents, with little access to sanitation or clean water.
Many have spent months in tents, exposed to winter rain and, more recently, rising heat. Limited garbage collection has allowed diseases and insects to spread, aid groups said.
Nour Ali, 35, a mother of four children displaced from Gaza City, said she and her family slept on the streets on Monday evening after leaving a house where they lived in the eastern Rafah district of Geneina , which had been the target of air strikes, had sought refuge on Monday morning.
“We wanted to return to the house after we found out about the ceasefire in the evening, but the bombardment continued and just continued non-stop. Nobody slept,” she said.
Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N. aid agency Ocha, said the occupation of the Rafah crossing – particularly after Israel closed its own Kerem Shalom border crossing with Gaza – threatened the entire humanitarian operation in the enclave.
Kerem Shalom was closed after a Hamas mortar attack over the weekend that killed four Israeli soldiers, although Israel has said it will reopen “as soon as security conditions permit.” Other aid routes into the central and northern Gaza Strip remain open, although only a limited number of convoys have entered through these routes. A long-planned U.S.-built floating pier off Gaza could begin operations this week.
“The two main arteries for transporting aid to Gaza are currently blocked,” Laerke told reporters in Geneva. He said that U.N. agencies’ aid stocks in the Gaza Strip were low and that “if fuel does not arrive for an extended period of time, that would be a very effective way to destroy the humanitarian operation.”
The Israeli military is “ignoring all warnings about what this could mean for civilians,” Laerke added. Aid workers in Gaza report that “panic and despair have taken over,” he said. “People are scared.”
Egypt has also condemned the occupation of the Rafah border crossing, which it said “threatens a lifeline for more than a million Palestinians” and the route through which some sick and wounded people can get to treatment.
Israel has long threatened a full-scale offensive in Rafah, where it believes remaining Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, who orchestrated the Oct. 7 attack, are believed to be hiding in the network of tunnels maintained by the militant group. According to Israeli authorities, 1,200 Israelis were killed in the October 7 attack.
But the United States and other Israel allies and aid groups have warned against such a move, given the humanitarian costs. According to Palestinian health authorities, more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli offensive. The United Nations World Food Program said this week that northern Gaza is experiencing “full-scale famine,” although it has not yet made a formal famine declaration.
The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said on Tuesday he was “afraid of it.” [offensive] will cause many civilian casualties. Whatever they say, there are 600,000 children in Gaza. They are pushed into the so-called “safe zones”. There are no ‘safe zones’ in Gaza.”
An Israeli military official said the occupation of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing was part of a “precise and limited operation.” . . in certain areas in the east of Rafah”.
But in the city, 27-year-old Mazen al-Sheikh Youssef said the news that the army had taken control of the crossing was “terrifying.” “We are in prison now and no help will even come,” he added. “They will starve and kill us like they did in the north.”
Additional reporting by Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv and Daria Mosolova in Brussels