The Israeli army has mobilized two brigades of reservists, between 3,000 and 7,000 troops, to reinforce its operations in Gaza. This movement comes as official sources affirm that the assault on Rafah, the only plot of land in the Strip that Israel has not yet entered by land, located next to the border with Egypt, will occur “very soon.” The army has everything ready and is only waiting for the government’s order, according to the Reuters agency citing Defense sources. This is an operation announced weeks ago but frozen amid widespread international criticism. At the same time, satellite images show the growth of two tented areas in that same area after Israel announced that it plans to displace hundreds of thousands of civilians from Rafah before beginning fighting against Hamas.
The latest mobilized are soldiers who have already been deployed on the northern border, which separates Israel from Lebanon, and where the exchanges of projectiles with the Shiite guerrilla Hezbollah are intense these days. They have received specific training in recent weeks to fight in the Strip before being transferred to those positions in the Palestinian Mediterranean enclave for attack and defense movements, according to a statement from the Israeli army this Wednesday.
The intention to mobilize them was made public 10 days ago and was related to the promised entry into Rafah, but the military announcement does not specify it. “The soldiers practiced combat techniques and acquired the main fundamentals and lessons of combat and ground maneuvers in the Gaza Strip,” the statement said.
The ground attack on Rafah, which currently houses most of the Gaza population, is expected to be “complicated,” according to an official source cited by the Israeli newspaper. Yeditoh Ahronoth.It would be carried out after announcing it and coordinating it with the United States, the main ally of Israel, Egypt and other countries in the region such as the Emirates, adds this medium citing official sources from Cairo, and would take place after evacuating the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. who have sought refuge in Rafah, after which fighting would begin that could last for about six weeks.
Getting all those civilians out could take four to five weeks, according to Kan public radio. The operation could begin “very soon,” the newspaper notes. Israel Hayom. “A large number of terrorists have successfully escaped to Rafah in recent months and, therefore, the army cannot rule out the possibility of intense fighting there,” adds that medium. To this we must add that Israel estimates that the hostages have been transferred to that area and one of the tasks of its troops is to rescue them, that newspaper details.
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Meanwhile, satellite images point to the recent appearance of two tent camps around Rafah and Khan Yunis, about five kilometers further north, according to the company Maxar Technologies. The photos, without official confirmation from the Israeli side, compare the appearance of these two areas under the control of the occupation troops on April 7 and this Tuesday, the 23rd. The Israeli Ministry of Defense has acquired 40,000 tents with a capacity of 12 people each, which would serve to house a total of 480,000 people.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeated on several occasions in recent weeks that this assault will be carried out despite widespread international opposition due to the number of victims it could cause among the 1.5 million Gazans. who take refuge in that territory, hit by an enormous humanitarian crisis. At the center of the final decision of the incursion in Rafah could be the failure of the negotiations, which have been stalled for months, to achieve a ceasefire and an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners. Israel, according to the newspaper Israel Hayomdirectly blames the leader of Hamas in the Strip, whom he considers the mastermind of the October 7 attack, Yahia Sinwar, for not accepting the conditions for this ceasefire.
Sinwar “is not isolated from reality” and would still be at the head of the group in Gaza, even supervising some operations on the ground in combat zones after temporarily leaving the tunnels where he has supposedly been protected for months, according to statements by a senior official of the palestinian movement to the newspaper Al-Arabi Al-Jadid. That same source, who is not identified, acknowledges that “it is not possible, of course, to concretely determine the number of living prisoners, but that, in any case, they are more than those claimed by the Israeli press,” which pointed to which were not enough to reach 40 among women, minors, the elderly and the sick.
He does claim that they are holding around 30 military and secret service commanders hostage after the attack on October 7. That day, Hamas murdered around 1,200 people in Israeli territory and kidnapped around 250. The Israeli military retaliation has already caused more than 34,000 deaths in Gaza. In any case, the Hamas official insists that it is necessary to carry out “serious negotiations” to free the more than 130 captives. To do this, they demand a permanent ceasefire, that is, that Israel does not resume the war after recovering the hostages. He also considers that one of the reasons why the agreement has not been closed is that they consider the United States more a part of the war, on the Israeli side, than an intermediary country. Sinwar continues to be the man most wanted by Israel, which in more than six months of fighting in Gaza has not managed to kill any of the top Hamas officials despite being one of the objectives of the war.
Rafah, in the southern tip of Gaza, is home to most of the territory’s 2.3 million inhabitants imprisoned along the Egyptian border. That is the only plot of land that the Israeli occupation troops have not taken over during the conflict. The Jewish state has already announced a plan to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people. But this military operation cannot be carried out without a large number of victims. This is understood by Washington, as well as by different United Nations agencies and humanitarian organizations deployed on the ground.
Netanyahu, despite international opposition even from his main ally, the United States, has assured on several occasions that the military operation in Rafah will be carried out because, he understands, it is the only way to eliminate the battalions that Hamas maintains there.
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