The Israeli military took control of the vital Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Tuesday, pushing into the southern Gazan town after a night of air strikes and as prospects for a ceasefire deal hung in the balance.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas said late on Monday it had agreed to a ceasefire proposal from mediators seven months into the war that has pushed more than a million Gazans into the south of the enclave.
Israel said the terms did not meet its demands and launched a military operation in Rafah.
Israeli tanks and planes pounded several areas and houses in Rafah overnight, killing 20 Palestinians and wounding several others in strikes that hit at least four houses, Palestinian health officials said.
“The Israeli occupation has sentenced the residents of the Strip to death after closure of the Rafah border crossing,” said Hisham Edwan, spokesperson for the Gaza Border Crossing Authority.
The Israeli military has taken control of the vital Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, pushing into the southern Gazan town after a night of air strikes.
Israel has been threatening to launch a major incursion in Rafah, which it says harbours thousands of Hamas fighters and potentially dozens of hostages. Victory is impossible without taking Rafah, it says.
Rafah crossing closed
A Gaza border authority spokesperson told Reuters the Rafah crossing, a major route for aid into the devastated enclave, was closed because of the presence of Israeli tanks. Israel’s Army Radio had earlier announced its forces were there.
The United States has been pressing Israel not to launch a military campaign in Rafah until it had drawn up a humanitarian plan for the Palestinians sheltering there, which Washington says it has yet to see.
Israel said the vast majority of people had been evacuated from the area of military operations.
Instructed by Arabic text messages, phone calls and flyers to move to what the Israeli military called an “expanded humanitarian zone” around 20 kilometres away, some Palestinian families began trundling away in chilly spring rain.
Some piled children and possessions onto donkey carts, while others left by pick-up truck or on foot through muddy streets.
As families dismantled tents and folded belongings, Abdullah Al-Najar said this was the fourth time he had been displaced since the fighting began seven months ago.
“God knows where we will go now. We have not decided yet.”
UN concerned about aid through Rafah
Hamas said in a brief statement that its chief, Ismail Haniyeh, had informed Qatari and Egyptian mediators the group accepted their proposal for a ceasefire.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said later the truce proposal fell short of Israel’s demands but Israel would send a delegation to meet with negotiators to try to reach an agreement.
Qatar’s foreign ministry said its delegation will head to Cairo on Tuesday to resume indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
In a statement, Netanyahu’s office said his war cabinet approved continuing an operation in Rafah. Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on social media site X that Netanyahu was jeopardizing a ceasefire by bombing Rafah.
Jens Laerke, a spokesperson or the UN humanitarian affairs office, warned that an assault on Rafah could break the fragile aid operation. He said all fuel entering Gaza comes through Rafah, and any disruption will halt humanitarian work.
“It will plunge this crisis into unprecedented levels of need, including the very real possibility of a famine,” said Laerke.
Hamas said it agreed to a proposal that outlines a phased release of the hostages alongside the gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops from the entire enclave and ends with a “sustainable calm,” defined as a “permanent cessation of military and hostile operations.”
In the first, 42-day stage of the ceasefire, Hamas would release 33 hostages — including women, children, older adults and the ill — in return for the release of hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, and Israeli forces would partially withdraw from parts of Gaza. The parties would then negotiate the terms of the next stage, under which the remaining civilian men and soldiers would be released, while Israeli forces would withdraw from the rest of Gaza.
Hamas has demanded an end to the war and complete Israeli withdrawal in return for the release of all hostages. Publicly, Israeli leaders have repeatedly rejected that trade-off, vowing to keep up their campaign until Hamas is destroyed.
Front Burner588:03:20At the McGill encampment: Calls to divest from Israel
Any truce would be the first pause in fighting since a week-long ceasefire in November, during which Hamas freed around half of the hostages.
Since then, all efforts to reach a new truce have foundered over Hamas’s refusal to free more hostages without a promise of a permanent end to the conflict, and Israel’s insistence that it would discuss only a temporary pause.
Hamas said on Monday it accepted an Egyptian-Qatari ceasefire proposal to halt its seven-month war with Israel in Gaza, hours after Israel ordered Palestinians to begin evacuating from Rafah. However, an Israeli military spokesperson says is ‘exhausting every possibility regarding negotiations.’
More than 34,789 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, according to Gaza health officials. The United Nations has said famine is imminent in the enclave.
The war began after Hamas led an attack in Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people, including several Canadian citizens. Another 252 people were abducted, of whom 133 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
