Beijing, 25 Apr (Xinhua) -- A senior Israeli defense official said on 24 April that the Israeli army is ready to attack Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip, just waiting for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to give an order.
The official told Reuters that the Israeli army could go on the offensive at any time if ordered to do so.
Netanyahu approved the Israeli army's plan to attack Rafah on March 15 and insisted that he would attack the city, despite widespread opposition from the international community and even persuasion from its ally the United States.
Rafah is located in the southern Gaza Strip and borders Egypt. After the outbreak of a new round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict in October last year, Israeli forces advanced from north to south from the Gaza Strip, and a large number of people fled to Rafah to escape the fighting. More than 1 million people now live in the town.
At this stage, the Israeli army is attacking the so-called Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) targets in Rafah by means of air strikes. The international community is concerned that if the Israeli army launches a ground war, it will inevitably cause a large number of civilian casualties. The Israeli side said that before attacking Rafah, local civilians would be evacuated. But it is unclear how Israel will resettle such a large number of civilians.
Reuters, citing a senior Israeli defense official, reported that the Israeli Defense Ministry had purchased 40,000 tents, each with a capacity of 10 to 12 people, to house civilians in Rafah.
An Israeli government source said Israel's wartime cabinet plans to meet in the next two weeks to decide on the transfer of civilians. The transfer is expected to take about a month. According to Reuters, satellite images and online video show that Israeli forces have cleared a large area of flat land in the city of Khan Younis, about 5 kilometers from Rafah, where a large number of tents have been erected.
The Egyptian side warned that if Israel attacked Rafah, it would cause massive casualties and losses, and that Egypt would not accept refugees from the Gaza Strip.
According to the latest bulletin issued by the health authorities in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military operation has killed more than 34,000 people and injured more than 70,000. In addition, the Gaza Strip faces severe food shortages and famine.
A Palestinian woman who took refuge with her family at a school in Rafah said they had to decide whether to flee Rafah and that it would be too late to evacuate if Israeli forces suddenly attacked. However, they did not know where to flee to escape the fighting. Some of her family members had recently moved to a refugee camp in the coastal area, but their tents were burned down by Israeli artillery fire. "Where can we go?" she asked.
Hisham Khalier, a senior associate researcher at the Tri-Services Institute, a British think tank, believes that the Israeli army will attack Rafah "only sooner rather than later" because Netanyahu is under great pressure to promise to rescue the detained Israeli personnel and "eliminate" Hamas. Negotiations between Israel and Hamas brokered for a ceasefire and the release of detainees have stalled. (Hui Xiaoshuang)