Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given the army orders to get ready for an assault on the Gaza Strip’s southern city of Rafah.

“It is impossible to achieve the goal of the war of eliminating Hamas by leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah,” he stated.

In a statement released by the prime minister’s office on Friday, he stated, “It is evident that intense activity in Rafah requires that civilians evacuate the areas of combat – a combined plan for evacuating the population and destroying the battalions.”
The UN has warned that a military assault in Rafah, which is in Gaza’s southernmost region and borders Egypt, might result in a humanitarian disaster that would have repercussions for the entire region.

Before the war, the city was home to about 300,000 people. However, after fighting broke out throughout the rest of the densely populated strip, some of the Palestinians who are currently seeking refuge there did so on orders from the Israeli Defense Forces.

“With nowhere to go, half of Gaza’s population is now crammed into Rafah,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres wrote in a post on The X.

In recent days, the US government and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock have made it apparent that they oppose military action in Rafah.