For the displaced in Rafah, another evacuation appears grim.
Aya, 30, who has been living temporarily in the city with her family in a school, said she is considering leaving. But she is worried it would be too dangerous. She said that some families recently moved to a refugee camp in coastal Al-Mawasi, but their tents caught fire when tank shells landed nearby.
“I have to make a decision whether to leave Rafah because my mother and I are afraid an invasion could happen suddenly and we won’t get time to escape,” she said. “Where do we go?”
H A Hellyer, a senior associate fellow in international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute, said he expected the assault on Rafah “sooner rather than later” because Netanyahu is under pressure to meet his stated objectives of rescuing the hostages and killing all the Hamas leaders.
“The invasion of Rafah is unavoidable because of the way he has framed all of this,” he said. But it will not be possible for everyone to leave the city, so “if he sends the military into Rafah, there are going to be a lot of casualties”.
Egypt said it warned Israel against moving on Rafah. Such a move, Egypt’s State Information Service said, “would lead to massive human massacres, losses (and) widespread destruction”.
