LAST UPDATE | 6 May

ISRAEL’S MILITARY HAS called for the evacuation of Palestinians from eastern Rafah ahead of a ground invasion of the city, as Gaza aid officials said Israeli jets struck two areas where the warning had been issued.

The evacuation call followed intensified disagreement between Israel and Hamas over the Islamist group’s demands to end the seven-month war, during weekend talks in Cairo.

Consultations between two other mediators, the United States and Qatar, were expected today in Doha but state-linked media in Egypt said negotiations had stalled after a rocket strike killed four Israeli soldiers yesterday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to send ground troops in against Hamas fighters in Rafah regardless of any truce, and despite concerns from the United States, other countries and aid groups.

US President Joe Biden spoke with Netanyahu by phone today, a White House official said.

A National Security Council spokesperson said Mr Biden reiterated US concerns about the invasion of Rafah – and said he believes a ceasefire with Hamas is the best way to protect the lives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

The call came hours before Biden is to host King Abdullah II of Jordan for a private lunch meeting at the White House.

Taoiseach Simon Harris called on Israel “not to undertake a full-scale military operation in Rafah”.

“The international community has made it very clear that an Israeli military operation in Rafah will inevitably lead to disastrous humanitarian consequences and the deaths of large numbers of innocent civilians,” he said today.

The protection of civilians is an obligation under international humanitarian law.

Evacuation order 

The “limited” and temporary evacuation order issued today aimed “to get people out of harm’s way”, the IDF said, and followed the deadly rocket fire that Israel’s military said came from an area adjacent to Rafah.

Gazan civil defence and aid officials said on Monday that Israeli jets had struck Al-Shuka and Al-Salam, among other areas, both of which were told to evacuate the day before.

The main aid group in Gaza, UNRWA, said “an Israeli offensive in Rafah would mean more civilian suffering and deaths”.

It added that it “is not evacuating”.

When asked how many people should move, a military spokesman said: “The estimate is around 100,000 people.”

However, Ossama al-Kahlut, a Palestine Red Crescent representative in east Rafah, said the designated evacuation zone hosts around 250,000 people, many of whom are already uprooted from elsewhere in Gaza.

‘Where can we go?’

One resident, Abdul Rahman Abu Jazar (36) said the area his family was told to seek refuge in “does not have enough room for us to make tents” because it is already full of displaced people.

“Where we can go?” he asked AFP.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday said Israel had yet to present “a credible plan” to protect civilians during the ground invasion that it has threatened for weeks.

Without it, Washington “can’t support a major military operation going into Rafah”, Blinken said.

And today EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell called the evacuation orders “unacceptable”.

They “portend the worst: more war and famine”, he said, urging Israel to “renounce” a ground offensive.

The French foreign ministry said it was “strongly opposed” to an offensive on Rafah.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the UK was “concerned deeply” about the possible offensive.

“We are concerned deeply about the prospect of a military incursion into Rafah given the number of civilians that are sheltering there and the importance of that crossing for aid,” he told broadcaster Sky News in an interview.

Gaza’s bloodiest-ever war began following Hamas’s unprecedented 7 October attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel estimates that 128 of the hostages abducted by militants on 7 October remain in Gaza, including 35 whom the military says are dead.

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has conducted a retaliatory offensive that has killed at least 34,735 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

About 1.2 million people are sheltering in Rafah, according to the World Health Organization.

In a statement, the Israeli military appealed for residents in the city’s eastern zone to move to the “expanded humanitarian area” at Al-Mawasi on Gaza’s nearby coast.

The area “includes field hospitals, tents and increased amounts of food, water, medication and additional supplies,” it said.

Repeatedly bombed

Soon after the war started, Israel told Palestinians living in northern Gaza to move to “safe zones” in the south – including Rafah near the Egyptian border.

But Rafah has been repeatedly bombed from the air – including today following the evacuation order – and Palestinians frequently say that nowhere in Gaza is safe.

Despite the evacuation order, Hamas spokesman Abdul Latif al-Qanou told AFP the movement “will continue the negotiations positively and with an open heart”.

CIA director Bill Burns, a mediator in the talks, is expected in Doha to meet with Qatar’s prime minister for “emergency” discussions, a source with knowledge of the truce talks told AFP yesterday.

The source, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the meeting would try “to see if the talks can be brought back on track”.

A Hamas official close to the negotiations said Sunday the group’s negotiators were headed from Cairo to Doha for “consultations”, after the weekend round failed to produce a breakthrough.

Hamas negotiators are then due back in Cairo on Tuesday, Al-Qahera News said.

Talks took place Sunday without an Israeli delegation present.

Netanyahu, however, made his voice heard.

Speaking at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in Jerusalem, he denounced a “volcano of anti-Semitism” and international criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza.

“If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone,” Netanyahu said.

With reporting from Cormac Fitzgerald