‘We’re waiting to be martyred’: Palestinians await Israeli attack on Rafah
Al Jazeera
Palestinians in Gaza say they have nowhere to run as they brace for Israel to escalate military operations on Rafah.
Rafah, Gaza Strip – Seham al-Najjar and her family have nowhere else to run if Israel intensifies its assault on Rafah, a town in southernmost Gaza. Like 1.8 million people, Seham fled to Rafah in search of relative safety from Israel’s relentless bombardment and ground invasion in other parts of the Gaza Strip.
She arrived weeks ago with 20 members of her family from Khan Younis, a city that Israel designated as “safe” at the start of the war and then reduced to rubble in December. Seham fears that Rafah could suffer an even worse fate.
Israeli Prime Minister “Benjamin Netanyahu wants to take this area from [Palestinians] and give it to the Zionists,” Seham, 30, told Al Jazeera. “Nowhere in Gaza is safe.”
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Rafah are bracing for an Israeli onslaught that could add to the long list of atrocities committed in Gaza, according to rights groups and United Nations agencies.
They said Israel has deliberately and disproportionately targeted civilians in Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’s surprise attack on Israeli communities and military outposts on October 7, in which 1,139 people were killed and 240 taken as captives into Gaza by fighters from the Qassam Brigades and other armed Palestinian groups.
