Israel plans to direct Palestinians out of Rafah ahead of anticipated offensive

TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military said Wednesday it plans to direct a significant portion of the 1.4 million displaced Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip’s southernmost town of Rafah toward “humanitarian islands” in the center of the territory ahead of its planned offensive in the area.

The fate of the people in Rafah has been a major area of concern of Israel’s allies — including the United States — and humanitarian groups.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said a Rafah offensive is crucial to achieve Israel’s stated aim of destroying Hamas following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in which about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and around 250 taken hostage and brought into Gaza.

Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said moving those in Rafah to the designated areas, which he said would be done in coordination with international actors, was a key part of the military’s preparations for its anticipated invasion of Rafah, where Israel says Hamas maintains four battalions it wants to destroy.

Rafah has swelled in size in the last months as Palestinians in Gaza have fled fighting in nearly every other corner of the territory. The town is covered in tents.

“We need to make sure that 1.4 million people or at least a significant amount of the 1.4 million will move. Where? To humanitarian islands that we will create with the international community,” Hagari told reporters at a briefing.

Hagari said those islands would provide temporary housing, food, water and other necessities to evacuated Palestinians. He did not say when Rafah’s evacuation would occur, nor when the Rafah offensive would begin, saying that Israel wanted the timing to be right operationally and to be coordinated with neighboring Egypt, which has said it does not want an influx of displaced Palestinians crossing its border.

The U.S. has been firm with Israel over its concerns about Rafah, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that Washington had yet to receive from Israel its plans for civilians there.

“We need to see a plan that will get civilians out of harm’s way if there’s a military operation in Rafah,” he told reporters in Washington after convening a virtual ministerial meeting on Gaza aid with officials from the U.N., the EU, Britain, Cyprus, Qatar and the UAE. “We’ve not yet seen such a plan.”

More than 31,270 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and most of its 2.3 million people forced from their homes, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza says. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.

Israel blames the civilian death toll on Hamas because the terrorists fight in dense, residential areas. The military has said it has killed 13,000 Hamas terrorists.

Meanwhile, fighting continued across Gaza. An Israeli strike Wednesday hit a food distribution site in southern Gaza run by UNRWA, the U.N. agency that works with Palestinian refugees, killing one staff member from the agency and wounding 22 others.

The death brings to 165 the number of workers for the agency killed during the past five months of fighting, according to UNRWA.

Gaza’s health authorities said a total of five people were killed in the strike on the yard of an UNRWA warehouse.

Hagari said the army was looking into the report.

Hagari said Wednesday Israel plans to “flood the area” with aid, with plans to scale up the entry of goods from multiple points in northern Gaza, after half a dozen trucks that delivered aid entered from the north on Tuesday as part of a pilot program. He did not say how many more trucks were expected to enter and at what frequency.

Hagari also said representatives from the U.S. military were expected in Israel this week to further coordinate a planned U.S. floating pier that will be built off the coast of Gaza, which he said would be “significant” for northern Gaza.

The U.S. and other countries have also been airdropping food into northern Gaza in recent weeks to help alleviate the crisis.