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Palestinians inspect their destroyed homes after an Israeli airstrike killed more than 60 people in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday.
© Loay Ayyoub/The Washington Post
A successful hostage rescue in Rafah is overshadowed by high human costs.
The city, once a safe haven, sinks into the chaos of war.
Jerusalem – The city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip has now become a refuge for 1.4 million Palestinians in the Israeli war.
Nevertheless, on Monday night, the Israeli attacks lit up the city - and frightened millions of people.
The Israeli army said it used the nighttime attacks to cover a special forces operation to free two elderly Israeli-Argentine hostages.
The operation was successful: Fernando Simon Merman, 60, and Luis Har, 70, were freed from Hamas hands.
But the human cost was enormous: at least 67 people were killed in the city, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
200 were wounded.
A video from a house in Rafah showed the body of a Palestinian girl, her legs reduced to shreds of flesh;
Other footage from the city showed a bleeding boy being carried away and four other children lying dead on gurneys.
Escape from the bombs: People in Rafah shocked by attacks in the Israel war
The overnight attacks in Rafah, a town largely spared from widespread airstrikes elsewhere in the enclave, shocked a population that has been traveling for months trying to escape the bombs.
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Palestinian families are crammed into houses and tents in Rafah;
some newcomers sleep on the streets.
They are almost entirely dependent on humanitarian aid as aid agencies warn of impending famine, and are cut off from their loved ones in other parts of the Strip.
“We are tired and can no longer endure this torment,” said Mirvat, 51, who is staying in a tent with her sister's family in Rafah after being expelled from Gaza City.
“All I hope now is that the war stops.”
“I don’t know where to go,” she added, echoing a sentiment echoed across Gaza.
“There is no safe place.” She spoke on the condition that she only be identified by her first name for security reasons.
Civilians everywhere in the Gaza Strip are trapped.
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Attack in Rafah: UN warns of humanitarian nightmare in Gaza Strip
Noting that half of Gaza's population is already crammed into Rafah, United Nations (UN) chief António Guterres said on social media that the upcoming Israeli campaign will end what is already a humanitarian nightmare. would increase exponentially.
The conflict began on October 7 when Hamas militants raided Israeli border communities from Gaza, killing 1,200 people and taking 253 hostage.
According to the Israeli Ministry of Health, more than 28,000 Palestinians were killed in Israeli retaliation and much of the Gaza Strip was leveled by airstrikes.
According to Israeli authorities, Hamas is holding the bodies of about 30 people killed on October 7.
According to the Israel Defense Forces, at least 9,000 fighters have been killed so far, but Hamas' top leaders remain at large.
Israeli authorities believe they are in Rafah along with more than 100 other hostages.
Israeli officials argue that they cannot complete their fight against Hamas without going after the group in Rafah - a prospect that has alarmed the United States, Israel's closest ally, which continues to provide the country with weapons and diplomatic support .
Palestinians inspect their destroyed homes after an Israeli airstrike killed more than 60 people in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
© Loay Ayyoub/The Washington Post
Attacks in Rafah: Biden increasingly on a confrontation course with Netanyahu
After Biden and Netanyahu spoke for the first time in more than three weeks on Sunday, a U.S. government official said the American position on Rafah had been made "very clear."
The United States would not support such an operation unless Israel had a plan for the protection and care of civilians "that is actually planned, prepared and implemented," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity under White House rules.
It was unclear whether the US president was aware that a major operation to free the two hostages would follow hours later.
In a press conference, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the operation had been planned “for some time.”
Netanyahu defends his attacks.
The bombardment lasted only a few hours, but its effects lingered Monday in homes and tents where civilians reached by telephone said they had barely slept.
Once again they were faced with the impossible decision of where to go.
In late October, Israel asked a million Palestinians in the north to move south for their safety, even as intensive bombing of the enclave continued.
In January, Israeli forces advanced into Khan Younis, an area in the south from which they had initially urged Gazans to flee.
Israeli authorities have designated a beach area called Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, as a “safe zone.”
But there have already been attacks there and there is hardly any relief supplies left.
“Deeply concerned”: Prosecutor from the Criminal Court speaks clearly about the Rafah drama
International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan said he was “deeply concerned” by the reports from Rafah.
“All wars have rules, and the laws applicable to armed conflicts must not be interpreted in a way that makes them hollow or meaningless,” he said in a statement posted on X, the former Twitter.
Aheda Abu Ataya, 40, who fled to Rafah with her children, said the house next to her tent was hit in the overnight attacks and she was trapped under the rubble.
Her neighbors got her out alive.
“We survived like a divine miracle,” she said.
“What happened yesterday cannot be described.
This is the second time I almost lost my life.”
Palestinian families who have been repeatedly relocated say each displacement is harsher than the last.
It is difficult to transport food and water.
Children who brought their favorite toys become heartbroken when they are left behind in the chaos.
The communication problems make it almost impossible to know what awaits them in other parts of the strip.
But above all there is the question of where they should go.
A humanitarian worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said his family of five was running out of options.
They had fled their home in Khan Younis in early December and were now preparing to return despite frequent attacks on the city.
He said they would stay with two dozen other relatives in his family's one-bedroom oceanfront home.
The last remaining road connecting the southern, central and northern Gaza Strips - known as al-Rasheed, or Beach Road - remains open, he said, although he did not know for how long.
During previous forced evacuations, some IDF-designated routes put civilians in the line of fire.
Israeli forces have also detained an unknown number of people at checkpoints along evacuation routes.
“So many people are on the move now,” he said.
"We have no other choice.
This is what we do to survive.”
After the attack on Rafah: Egypt no longer accepts refugees from Gaza
For most people there is still no way to leave the Gaza Strip.
Before the war, people from Gaza who met certain criteria could pay several hundred dollars to an Egyptian company that coordinated their exit into Egypt through the Rafah border crossing.
Now the price has risen to $5,000 per adult or more, unaffordable for most families in the impoverished enclave.
Even for the few who can afford it, the process remains opaque and uncertain.
On Monday, Egyptian company Hala posted a notice on its website saying it is temporarily no longer accepting new applicants because the waiting list is too long.
In a public Telegram channel about the Rafah crossing on Monday, Gazans tried to crowdsource their options and asked for help getting on an exit list and making payments.
“Which is better,” one person wrote, “to stay in Rafah or to return to the center?” No one could give an answer.
Harb and Loveluck reported from London.
Karen DeYoung in Washington, Heba Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo and Hazem Balousha in Amman contributed to this report.
To the authors
Louisa Loveluck
is a London-based correspondent covering global crises.
From 2019 to 2023, she was the newspaper's Baghdad bureau chief.
Before that, she reported on the war in Syria from Beirut.
Miriam Berger
covers foreign news for The Washington Post from Washington, DC.
Before joining the Post in 2019, she lived in Jerusalem and Cairo and reported freelance from the Middle East and parts of Africa and Central Asia.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on February 12, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.