GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) Three Palestinian human rights institutions have warned against the expansion of the Israeli occupation forces’ ground attack to include Rafah, which means the continuation of the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip for 120 days.
The institutions said in their official announcement: The recent statements of Israeli war leaders, in addition to the escalation of current attack patterns, indicate an imminent attack on Rafah, just as we have seen in Khan Yunis and other areas of the Gaza Strip.
They warned that this would mean more casualties than we have seen before, with Rafah Governorate crowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, while the mass expulsion of Palestinians is a reality, and the new Nakba for the Palestinian people is being completed.
The Palestinian Center, Al-Mezan Center, and Al-Haq Foundation in their statement pointed out that nearly one hundred thousand Palestinians have been killed, injured, or missing during this ongoing aggression on the Gaza Strip, which is approximately 5% of the total population of the Gaza Strip. They stated that this is one of the highest casualty rates in any war in modern history.
Rafah Governorate hosts the vast majority of displaced persons who have been forced to flee from all parts of the Gaza Strip due to deliberate air, land, and sea bombardments targeting entire residential areas, shelters, hospitals, public and private facilities, accompanied by military orders urging residents to head south.
According to the statement, forced displacement operations and the influx of thousands of displaced persons continue even from areas previously declared safe by the occupation forces, including Khan Yunis and the central governorates, towards Rafah.
Rafah is crowded with hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, most of whom are concentrated in western Rafah, the area clearly designated on maps published by the occupation forces as a single safe zone, which is now crowded with tens of thousands of tents sheltering displaced persons in deteriorating humanitarian conditions beyond any human imagination.
Estimates indicate that more than 1.5 million people, out of a total population of about 2.3 million, are now concentrated in Rafah Governorate.
Although Rafah Governorate has not been safe from shelling operations since the beginning of the attack, including air, sea, and ground shelling that targeted residential homes and civilian facilities, and the latest of which occurred on Saturday morning, with the bombing of two houses resulting in the killing of 17 Palestinians, mostly women and children, it has not yet been subjected to a comprehensive ground invasion like the rest of the Gaza Strip.
The recent statements by the Israeli war minister from inside Khan Yunis, “We will also reach Rafah,” in addition to the ongoing threats to control the border strip between Rafah Governorate and Egypt, as well as the continued shelling along the eastern areas of Rafah Governorate, all clearly indicate an imminent attack on the governorate.
They warned that the attack on Rafah would represent the peak of the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, aiming to cause the largest number of casualties and injuries among civilians and force them to flee south towards the Egyptian borders, which are only meters away, and then a new Nakba for the Palestinian people would be imposed and become an inevitable reality.
They also warned the international community, especially the permanent members of the Security Council, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, of the danger of the current situation in the Gaza Strip and called on them to take immediate measures to prevent the new Nakba in Palestine and stop the genocide against the Gaza Strip.
They warned Israel’s partners in the genocide, whether through their unlimited military and political support for the occupying state or through their silence, and demanded that they fulfill their legal obligations before it is too late and take practical steps to protect Palestinian civilians and stop the mass killing operations and prevent the continuation of the genocide that has been ongoing for 4 months.
