Zain Khalil
20 March 2024•Update: 20 March 2024
JERUSALEM
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that his army is preparing to enter Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, adding that "this will take a little time."
In a televised speech broadcast via his official account on X, Netanyahu began by summarizing the details of a phone call he had with US President Joe Biden last Monday.
“At the beginning, we agreed that Hamas needs to be eliminated. But during the war, it is no secret, there have been disagreements between us on the best way to achieve this goal,” Netanyahu said.
At the outset, he told the president that defeating Hamas requires the Israeli army entering the Gaza Strip, and that in their most recent conversation, he told him that completing the victory requires the army entering Rafah to eliminate the remnants of Hamas' battalions.
Addressing the Israelis, the prime minister said he had already approved the army operational plan and that they would soon approve the plan to evacuate civilians from battle zones.
“As we are preparing to enter Rafah, and this will take a little time, we are continuing to operate with full force. We are continuing to operate in Khan Yunis, in the camps in the center, in eliminating and capturing senior Hamas officials as we have just done in Shifa (hospital), and in eliminating hundreds of ‘terrorists’,” the Israeli premier pointed out.
Following the phone call between Biden and Netanyahu, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday that the Israeli prime minister agreed to send a team to the US to discuss Israel's plan to invade Rafah "without a major ground invasion."
This came despite escalating regional and international warnings about the consequences of any Israeli ground invasion of Rafah, which houses about 1.4 million Palestinian refugees displaced by the Israeli army's onslaught on other parts of the Gaza Strip, pushing them to the area, promising them safety, and then launching attacks that resulted in fatalities and injuries.
Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack led by Hamas in which some 1,200 Israelis were killed.
Nearly 32,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in Gaza, and more than 74,000 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.
The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of most food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to ensure its forces do not commit acts of genocide, and guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala
