Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Israel has begun preparations to evacuate civilians from Rafah ahead of a long-expected assault on the city in southern Gaza where the bulk of Hamas’s remaining forces and more than 1mn displaced people are concentrated.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted Israel will launch a ground offensive in Rafah, arguing that it would be impossible to fulfil his country’s goal of destroying Hamas without doing so.
However, his government has come under international pressure over its plans, with the US warning that a big operation in Rafah would be a “mistake” and insisting civilians must be moved from the city before any military operation is launched.
Senior Israeli officials have made clear any large-scale military incursion into Rafah would only proceed once the “strategic conditions” had been set, including co-ordinating with neighbouring Egypt and evacuating civilians to safe zones provisioned with temporary shelters, water, food and health services.
Officials said civilians sheltering in Gaza’s southernmost city would be moved to areas “geographically close” to Rafah, including a coastal safe zone called Al-Mawasi, the city of Khan Younis, and perhaps central areas of the strip.
Israel has purchased 40,000 tents in preparation for the evacuation from Rafah, according to officials. But Israeli forces would not themselves construct the “humanitarian enclaves” to which civilians would be directed to avoid the fighting, one official said.
“It’s not a secret: an operation in Rafah will happen, humanitarian enclaves will be set up, and we will move uninvolved civilians there,” the official added. “It’ll take time, and will require a joint effort and significant co-operation with the various international organisations.”
Another Israeli official said an evacuation of civilians from Rafah was a “matter of weeks” away, and that the evacuation itself would take a similar amount of time. The war cabinet is expected to discuss the topic when it meets on Thursday.
But according to two people familiar with the issue, the UN has pushed back against any co-ordination with Israel for the evacuation of Rafah.
“[The UN] is telling Israel, ‘don’t do this’. They’re not offering to facilitate on behalf of the Israel Defense Forces,” said one person.
A second person said it was likely that, in the absence of Israeli soldiers and UN aid workers, the “humanitarian enclaves” would be set up by “local actors” from within Gaza.
Satellite data reviewed by the Financial Times showed at least two new clusters of tents — one in the north-eastern outskirts of Rafah, and another west of Khan Younis — had already been constructed since Israel scaled back its operations in Gaza on April 7, although it was not clear by whom.
The Israeli military assesses that the last four standing Hamas battalions are based in Rafah, as well as perhaps some of the Hamas leadership and the more than 130 Israelis still held hostage by the militant group.
There is also a need, some analysts said, to sever Hamas’s control over the critical border crossing with Egypt through which the group has traditionally smuggled in weapons.
“You can’t leave the seeds of a Hamas military framework [in Rafah] that can then grow up and take over Gaza again,” said Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesperson.
The IDF has significantly reduced its troop presence inside Gaza in recent months, launching limited raids into the northern and central regions of the enclave to root out remaining Hamas fighters.
A Rafah operation, both Israeli officials and analysts have said, would be a significantly bigger undertaking — but probably one that would mark the beginning of the end of the war.
After Rafah, “the high-intensity phase of the war would be over,” said a person familiar with Israeli war plans.
People briefed on discussions with Israeli officials in recent days said that the Jewish state believed it had earned credit from western capitals for its restrained response to Iran’s attack on the country that gives it more scope in its planned assault on Rafah.
One official said that while Israel thought it would now “have credit” from the limited strikes on Iran last week, it had not “fundamentally changed” the attitude of western countries towards a Rafah assault. “It won’t go without consequences,” they added.
Israel’s steps to allow greater amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza had helped take the US threat of applying conditions to its support for Israel off the table at least for now, US officials said, with one suggesting that could change if Israel carried out a huge operation in Rafah.
Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder said on Tuesday that he was “not aware at this point of any detailed Rafah plan, executable, credible plan that’s been shared with us. But I know those conversations continue.”
Additional reporting by Jana Tauschinski in London