The United Nations and aid groups have criticized the Israeli army for cutting off a key aid route by seizing the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip, warning that supplies are already running low in the enclave, which is on the brink of famine , will continue to dwindle.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Israel to reopen two key land crossings so urgently needed aid supplies could reach Palestinians in Gaza.
“The closure of Rafah and Kerem Shalom [Karem Abu Salem] Crossings are particularly damaging to the already dire humanitarian situation. “They need to be reopened immediately,” he said Tuesday.
Earlier on Tuesday, Israel occupied the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing as ceasefire talks with the Palestinian group Hamas remain precarious.
Hamas said late Monday it had accepted a proposal for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip put forward by Qatari and Egyptian mediators. Israel said the proposal did not meet Israeli requirements and that it would send a delegation to meet with the mediators.
Guterres warned that an attack on Rafah, where more than 1.4 million displaced Palestinians are seeking refuge, would be “a strategic mistake, a political disaster and a humanitarian nightmare.”
Amnesty International called on the international community to pressure Israel to immediately end its ground operations in Rafah and ensure full humanitarian access in Gaza.
The group’s senior director of research, advocacy, policy and campaigns, Erika Guevara-Rosas, said Israel’s long-threatened large-scale ground operation in Rafah would worsen “the untold suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.”
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who visited the troops, said the operation in Rafah would continue until Israel “eliminated” Hamas in Rafah and the rest of Gaza.
But he said Israel was willing to make “compromises” to bring prisoners home. “If this option is canceled, we will further deepen the operation,” he said. “This will happen everywhere in the Gaza Strip – south, center and north.”
‘It’s not safe’
Red Crescent sources in Egypt said aid deliveries through the Rafah border crossing had completely stopped on Tuesday.
“The Israeli occupation has sentenced residents of the Strip to death,” said Hisham Edwan, spokesman for the Gaza Border Crossing Authority.
In Geneva, UN humanitarian office spokesman Jens Laerke said “panic and desperation” had gripped the people of Rafah.
He said that under international law, people must be given sufficient time to prepare for an evacuation and must be provided with a safe route to a safe area with access to relief supplies. This was not the case during the evacuation of Rafah, he said.
“It is littered with unexploded ordnance and huge bombs lying on the street. It’s not safe,” he said.
The comments came after an Israeli government spokesman called on international organizations to evacuate areas in Rafah where military operations continue.
The spokesman said that despite the military operation, aid continued to flow into the enclave.
Aid groups have been warning for months that Israel’s restrictions on aid deliveries to Gaza are exposing the population to severe hunger. There is already famine in the north of the territory.
Hamas has accused Israel of trying to undermine efforts for a ceasefire after Israel’s seven-month assault on Gaza devastated the Gaza Strip and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and hungry.
Israeli army footage showed tanks rolling through the Rafah border crossing and the Israeli flag being raised on the Gaza side.
Israel sends delegation to Cairo
The occupation of the Rafah border crossing comes after weeks of pressure from several of Israel’s key Western allies to repel a ground attack on Rafah without a plan for the safe evacuation of civilians.
Many of the people in Rafah struggled to find safety in the tiny strip of land that has been bombarded almost continuously since October 7.
Families have been crammed into tent camps and makeshift shelters and are suffering from shortages of food, water, medicine and other essential supplies.
Residents said Israeli tanks and aircraft attacked several areas and houses in Rafah overnight on Monday and Tuesday. Gaza’s Health Ministry said 54 Palestinians were killed and 96 others injured in Israeli strikes across the enclave in the past 24 hours.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 34,789 Palestinians have now been killed in the attack.
Meanwhile, Guterres called on Israel and Hamas to spare no effort to reach a ceasefire agreement.
Hamas said late Monday it had told Qatari and Egyptian mediators conducting the indirect talks that it had agreed to a ceasefire proposal, but Israel said the terms did not meet its demands.
However, the various players appeared ready to talk again on Tuesday.
A team of senior Israeli officials will travel to Cairo in the coming hours to see whether Hamas can be persuaded to change its latest ceasefire offer, a senior Israeli official said.
The official also reiterated that the current Hamas proposal is unacceptable to Israel.
“This delegation consists of mid-level envoys. “If a credible deal were in sight, the chiefs would lead the delegation,” the official told Reuters, referring to senior officials from the Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence agencies who lead the Israeli side.
A Palestinian official involved in mediation efforts told Reuters that a Hamas delegation could arrive in Cairo later on Tuesday or Wednesday to discuss the ceasefire proposal.
Any ceasefire would be the first pause in fighting since a week-long truce in November in which Hamas released dozens of prisoners and Israel freed 240 Palestinians it held in its prisons.
Since then, efforts to reach a new ceasefire have failed due to Hamas’s refusal to release more prisoners without promising a permanent end to the conflict and Israel’s insistence on considering only a temporary pause in its attack.