Tanks reached the middle of Rafah on Tuesday as Israel’s global isolation deepened, with three European countries formally recognising a Palestinian state and the UN security council calling an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in Gaza.
Overnight Israeli forces again attacked the Tel al-Sultan area, where at least 45 people were killed on Sunday by an airstrike and huge fire in an area crowded with refugee tents.
Twenty-one people were killed in the latest strike, more than half of them women, authorities in Gaza said. At least one bomb landed about 300 metres from the site of the weekend strike. But Israel’s military later said in a statement that it denied carrying out the strike.
Growing international outrage about the Israeli push into Rafah, including an order from the UN’s top court to stop the offensive and sharp criticism from the US, Israel’s most important ally, after Sunday’s attack, have not had any apparent impact on its military plans.
On Tuesday, the White House said that Israel’s actions in Rafah do not cross any US red lines, but insisted that the Biden administration is not turning a “blind eye” to the plight of Palestinian civilians. National security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said the US would monitor Israel’s probe into Sunday’s strike.
The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, described Sunday’s strike as a “tragic mistake” but vowed to continue the operation. Later a spokesperson for the Israeli military said its airstrike had not caused the fire.
R Adm Daniel Hagari said jets used small bombs to kill two Hamas commanders inside buildings about 180 metres from tents where the fire broke out.
“Our munition alone could not have ignited a fire of this size,” he said, adding that the military was investigating whether the “unexpected and unintended” fire had been caused by secondary explosions at what they claimed was an ammunition warehouse near tents.
About 1 million Palestinians have fled Rafah since early May, but hundreds of thousands are still sheltering there, Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said on Tuesday.
“[They left] with nowhere safe to go and amidst bombardments, lack of food and water, piles of waste and unsuitable living conditions,” Unrwa said in a post on X. “Day after day, providing assistance and protection becomes nearly impossible.”
For months, Israel urged Palestinian civilians to seek safety in Rafah as intense fighting razed much of the rest of Gaza. Now they are being told to move again, as Israeli troops move in to the last area that had not seen ground operations.
For much of May, since seizing the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, Israeli ground forces had mostly probed the city’s outskirts and entered only eastern areas.
But on Tuesday tanks were seen near al-Awda mosque, a landmark in central Rafah, Reuters reported, citing witnesses. They also pushed towards western neighbourhoods, taking positions on the Zurub hilltop, after heavy bombardment.
Not all Palestinians sheltering there are able to move, and some have decided there is greater danger in moving given fighting continues across much of Gaza and there is little shelter, food, water or sanitation elsewhere.
The military operation has choked off most aid to Gaza. The Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings were the main entry point for food, fuel and medical supplies during the first seven months of war, but in more than three weeks from 6 to 28 May, just 216 aid trucks entered Gaza, UN figures show.
That is an average of fewer than 10 a day, although Israel, the US and the UN had agreed a minimum daily 500 trucks, the prewar level, was needed.
Some supplies had reached northern Gaza through a floating pier built by the US. But on Tuesday, the Pentagon said that part of the $320m had broken away in heavy seas, rendering it inoperable for at least a week while it is repaired.
The World Food Programme (WFP) – the UN’s food agency – and Unrwa provide the majority of food aid in Gaza.
The UN security council is due to convene an emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss Israel’s campaign in Rafah, and the US government on Monday warned Israel to “take every precaution possible to protect civilians”.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to health authorities there. It was launched after Hamas launched cross-border attacks on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage.
On Tuesday, Spain, Ireland and Norway formally recognised the state of Palestine. They said the move would bolster efforts to reach a permanent solution to decades of conflict, but Israel has fiercely attacked their decision and recalled ambassadors from Madrid, Dublin and Oslo last week in response.
Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said on Tuesday the “historic” decision had been taken “with a single goal: to contribute to achieving peace between Israelis and Palestinians”, and was not directed “against anyone, least of all Israel”.
Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement on X that Sánchez’s actions made him “complicit … in war crimes”.
More than 140 countries recognise a Palestinian state already, but no major western powers had done so. The move by the European trio could add to pressure in nearby capitals and even Washington.
As Oslo’s formal recognition went into effect, the country’s foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, said it was a significant moment, after decades of Norwegian support for a two-state solution to the regional conflict.
“For more than 30 years, Norway has been one of the strongest advocates for a Palestinian state. Today … is a milestone in the relationship between Norway and Palestine,” he said.
Sanchez said a “viable” Palestinian state would comprise the West Bank and Gaza, connected by a corridor, with East Jerusalem as its capital and the Palestinian national authority as its legitimate government.
He said that while it was not up to Spain to define another country’s borders, its position was aligned with those of the UN security council and the EU: “Therefore we won’t recognise change in the 1967 lines other than those agreed to by the parties.”
In Ireland, the Palestinian flag was raised over parliament, while the government announced the Palestinian mission in Dublin would be upgraded to an embassy and Ireland would also upgrade its representative office in Ramallah, in the West Bank, to an embassy.
• Additional reporting by Sam Jones in Madrid and Rory Carroll in Dublin
