The Palestinian presidency on Friday “vehemently” condemned the Israeli plan for a military offensive on Rafah, a town in the south of the Gaza Strip where more than a million Palestinians displaced by the war are crowded.
This project, announced during the day by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "is a real threat and a dangerous prelude" to the application of the Israeli political project aimed at "displacing the Palestinians from their land", adds the office of the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in a press release.
“The Palestinians will not abandon their land and will not accept being forcibly displaced from their homeland,” continues the Palestinian presidency.
A “blatant violation of all red lines”
It also calls on the UN Security Council "to assume its responsibilities" in the face of this expansion of the "Israeli occupation" which is a "blatant violation of all red lines" and "threatens security and peace in the region and the rest of the world.
“The time has come for everyone to assume their responsibilities” to avoid “a new catastrophe which will plunge the entire region into endless wars,” she believes.
The Palestinian presidency also emphasizes that it will hold the Israeli government “fully responsible for the consequences” of this project and that the American administration bears “particular responsibility for preventing what could be a disastrous escalation”.
An “alarming” project
For his part, Josep Borrell, head of European diplomacy, denounced an “alarming” project with “catastrophic” consequences, aggravating an already disastrous humanitarian situation and an unbearable civilian toll.
“1.4 million Palestinians are currently in Rafah, with no safe place to go, facing starvation,” he continued.
In the far south of the Gaza Strip, on the border with Egypt, Rafah is currently home to more than a million of Gaza's approximately 2.4 residents, a population displaced by the war.
After the Israeli army concentrated its military operations in the Palestinian territory on the towns of Gaza (north) then Khan Younes, further south, the Israeli Prime Minister asked the IDF on Friday to submit a “combined plan” for “evacuation” of civilians from Rafah and “destruction” of Hamas in this locality.