Israel mulling ‘evacuation plan’ as Rafah offensive looms
Al Jazeera
Rafah assault ‘inevitable’, says Israeli PM Netanyahu. Any deal with Hamas would only delay it.
Israel is mulling an “evacuation plan” for civilians from unspecified parts of the Gaza Strip.
A plan to evacuate people from “areas of fighting” was presented to the war cabinet by the military, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement issued on Monday. The proposal comes as the Israeli army prepares for a long-threatened offensive on the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1.4 million people are trapped.
The war cabinet discussed late on Sunday the “plan for evacuating the population from the areas of fighting in the Gaza Strip” and “the upcoming operational plan”, the prime minister’s office said.
However, the details are unconfirmed. The brief statement did not specify that the plans are related to the intended ground invasion of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has been forcibly displaced.
“This is a dual action plan. One, for Israel’s ground invasion into Rafah, and two, an evacuation plan for the nearly 1.5 million Palestinians who are seeking refuge in Gaza’s southernmost city,” said Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem.
