Israel has launched a major military offensive against Hamas forces in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, seizing control of a key border crossing and cutting off most aid into the territory a day before indirect talks on a ceasefire deal are due to restart.
Images released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) showed tanks flying large Israeli flags driving through the post and crushing a concrete sign reading “I Love Gaza”.
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said the offensive would continue until Hamas forces in Rafah “and the entire Gaza Strip” were “eliminated” or the militant Islamist organisation begins to release hostages. A government spokesperson described the first stage of a wider effort targeting Hamas.
“This is the beginning of our mission to take out the last four Hamas brigades in Rafah. You should be in no doubt about that whatsoever,” the spokesperson said.
The Israeli operation was launched hours after an announcement by Hamas leaders on Monday night that they would accept a recent proposal for a ceasefire deal put forward by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
Any truce would be the first pause in fighting since a week-long ceasefire in November during which Hamas freed about half of the 250 Israeli and other national hostages seized in a surprise attack into Israel in October. During that exchange, Israel released 240 Palestinians from its jails.
Since then, intermittent negotiations 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.
Israeli officials on Monday accused Hamas of “grandstanding” while Hamas said Israel was trying to undermine efforts to end the seven-month-long war that has laid waste to Gaza and left hundreds of thousands of its people homeless and hungry.
However, Israel decided to send a delegation to Cairo where indirect talks are due to start again within days.
The White House national security adviser, John Kirby, appeared optimistic on Tuesday, saying the US believed after looking at a text of the proposal put forward by mediators that it should be possible to close the gaps between the two sides.
Reports suggest the proposal Hamas agreed to does not include an immediate permanent end to hostilities but involves three consecutive phases, with different ratios for exchanges of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails for hostages, and a series of staged withdrawals of Israeli forces from zones in Gaza.
Further negotiations could take many days or even weeks, during which time fighting is likely to continue as both sides seek leverage in negotiations, analysts said.
International powers including the US, Israel’s staunchest ally, repeatedly warned Israel against a major military operation in Rafah, where more than 1 million people displaced from elsewhere in Gaza are sheltering. Aid agencies have predicted a “humanitarian catastrophe”.
Israel told the US its operation in Rafah was limited and designed to prevent weapons and funds from being smuggled into Gaza, Kirby said.
Aid officials in the territory said the flow of humanitarian assistance through the Rafah crossing had been entirely halted, leaving reserves of fuel only sufficient to run the extensive relief operation in Gaza for another day. Parts of Gaza are facing famine and everywhere there is acute hardship.
“We are down to less fuel than in a single service station. It’s enough to last a day, basically. After that, nothing will be moving, and the hospitals won’t be able to keep going for more than two or three days,” said Georgios Petropoulos, the head of the Gaza sub-office of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
It comes as the US military says it has completed the construction of a Gaza aid pier, but weather conditions mean it was unsafe to move the two-part facility into place, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
The pier is aimed at boosting deliveries of aid and is to cost at least $320m.
The Kerem Shalom border post, another main access point for aid, was shut after a rocket barrage killed four Israeli soldiers there earlier this week. There were further rocket and mortar strikes against the same target on Tuesday, an Israeli military official said.
The Rafah crossing was the only exit point for those needing to leave Gaza for medical treatment that is no longer available in the territory.
Lama Abu Holi, eight, has been in al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza for a month, waiting for a chance to leave for treatment to her injured legs.
“Today my name was at the border, and I should travel to get my legs treated,” she said, holding a toy in her hospital bed. “They hurt. I am supposed to have an operation. Because the border crossing is shut today, I could not travel. I am sad because I did not leave today.”
An Israeli military official said the target of the operation in Rafah was “terrorist infrastructure”.
The Gaza health ministry said Israeli strikes across the territory had killed 54 Palestinians and wounded 96 others in the past 24 hours.
On Sunday Israel’s military told civilians in eastern neighbourhoods of Rafah to head for what it calls an “expanded humanitarian zone” at al-Mawasi along the coast and around the largely deserted city of Khan Younis. Thousands have left Rafah since the warning, in battered trucks, pushing trolleys, on donkey carts and walking, but aid agencies said neither location could accommodate a new influx.
A total of 34,789 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in the conflict, the Gaza health ministry said.
The October Hamas attacks killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians in their homes or at a music festival.
The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s grip on power could slip if he loses support of far-right coalition allies who oppose any concessions to Hamas, but there is also pressure to free the remaining hostages.
“Capitulating to Hamas’s demands would be a terrible defeat for the state of Israel. It would exhibit terrible weakness to our friends and to our enemies. This weakness would only bring closer the next war,” Netanyahu said in a statement on Tuesday.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, an umbrella group, said it had appealed to a number of countries to “exert influence on the Israeli government” and push for an agreement.
“At this crucial moment, while a tangible opportunity for the release of the hostages is on the table, it is of the utmost importance that your government manifest its strong support for such an agreement,” the group said in a message sent to the ambassadors of all countries with citizens among the hostages seized by Hamas.
“This is the time to exert your influence on the Israeli government and all other parties concerned to ensure that the agreement comes through which will finally bring all our loved ones home.”
Abu Ubaida, a spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, said in a statement on Tuesday that a 70-year-old Israeli hostage died after she succumbed to wounds from Israeli shelling. There was no independent confirmation of the claim.
