A tent camp housing Palestinians driven from their homes throughout Gaza, in Rafah, February 27, 2024. Photo: AP
As Israel’s bombs, tanks, and bulldozers reduced much of northern Gaza to uninhabitable ruins, the Israeli military claimed Rafah, on the southern edge of Gaza bordering Egypt, would be a “safe zone.” Now, over half the population of Gaza, some 1.5 million people, have packed into this town. They try to survive, living side-by-side in makeshift tents, without access to bathrooms, water, food, or basic sanitation.
Much worse looms, as unimaginable as that might seem. Israel’s Prime Minister Netan-NAZI (aka Benjamin Netanyahu) has threatened that Israeli troops will invade Rafah, even if there's a cease-fire. Any form of an Israeli invasion of Rafah would take the existing catastrophic situation for the people of Gaza to a whole other extreme.
The level of death and terror in Rafah was ratcheted up on March 2 in two Israeli strikes.
The first was an Israeli drone strike outside the Emirati maternity hospital in Rafah which killed at least 11 people and injured dozens, including children.
This is the hospital where half the births in Gaza take place (!). Aid workers called the strike a terrifying risk to expecting mothers, newborn babies, and the heroic healthcare workers attempting to care for them. Pregnant women in Gaza are facing extreme rates of miscarriages. Doctors Without Borders, which provides medical staff for the hospital, said the attack would make this even worse—keeping pregnant women from seeking care.
The Israeli military described the massacre, which shook the entrance to the hospital, as a “precision strike” against “Islamic Jihad terrorists.” When asked if those “terrorists” included the children injured in the so-called “precision strike,” Israeli officials refused to comment.
Hours later, Israel bombed a residential building in Rafah, killing at least 14 Palestinians and burying many others under the rubble. At least six children were killed and dozens more were wounded. These and other attacks brought the death toll of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza to at least 30,320.
And the Palestinian people sheltering in Gaza live and breathe with the threat of much worse hanging over their heads.