Israel-Gaza war live: Israel lacks ‘credible plan’ to safeguard Rafah civilians, says US | Israel-Gaza war

Palestinians who have fled Rafah have been speaking to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“We endured three days that can be considered hell,” said Mohammed Hamad, a 24-year-old resident of eastern Rafah who was among the 300,000 Palestinians that Israel says have fled the fighting.

Despite international opposition to any major military operation in Rafah, Israel has shifted its focus to the heavily populated area in what it says is an effort to destroy the last bastion of Hamas.

Eastern parts of the city have been heavily bombarded in recent days, according to witnesses, as Israel sent tanks and ground troops into the areas in “targeted raids”.

“They were among the worst nights for us since the beginning of the war,” Hamad told AFP from al-Mawasi, an area Israel has designated a “humanitarian zone” despite aid groups warning that it is unprepared for such an influx (see earlier post at 09.45).

“They started by distributing flyers in the morning, and immediately began brutal artillery and aerial bombardment without giving people a chance to think or organise their belongings properly,” Hamad added.

Hisham Adwan, spokesperson for the Gaza crossings authority, told AFP on Sunday that the Rafah crossing has remained closed since Israeli troops seized its Palestinian side on Tuesday, “preventing the entry of humanitarian aid” and the departure of patients needing medical care.

He said Israeli forces “have advanced from the eastern border” about 2.5 kilometres (1.6 miles) into Rafah, the southern Gazan city the Israeli military is now ordering civilians to evacuate from as it prepares to intensify its military assault.

The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, has branded Hamas “callous” over a video showing British-Israeli hostage Nadav Popplewell, who the militants said had died in Gaza in an Israeli airstrike.

He told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: “I can’t give you any new updates this morning.

“Like everyone else, I watched the video on Twitter, X, last night, put out by Hamas of Nadav answering a question as to who he was. And I watched that video and you just think, what callous people they are to do that, to play with the family’s emotions in that way.

“I met Nadav’s family, his sister, and I know the heartbreak they’ve been going through for over 200 days, and when you see what Hamas are prepared to do, you just realise the terrible, dreadful, inhuman people, frankly, that we are dealing with.”

Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken to Israel’s Eurovision entrant, Eden Golan, who finished fifth on Saturday, the Israeli prime minister’s office announced.

Switzerland won the 68th song contest, which was overshadowed by a row over Israel’s inclusion and the disqualification of the Dutch contestant just hours before the start of the grand final.

Netanyahu told Golan: “Eden, what success and what honor you have brought us. They booed you and we shouted: ‘Douze points!’

“I saw that you received almost the highest number of votes from the public and this is the most important thing, not from the judges but from the public, and you held Israel’s head up high in Europe.”

A full-scale Israeli assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah “cannot take place”, the UN human rights chief has warned, saying it could not be reconciled with international law.

The Israeli military on Saturday expanded an evacuation order for eastern Rafah and said 300,000 Palestinians had left the area.

“The latest evacuation orders affect close to a million people in Rafah. So where should they go now? There is no safe place in Gaza!” Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement.

“These exhausted, famished people, many of whom have been displaced many times already, have no good options.”

He said a full-scale offensive could have a “catastrophic impact … including the possibility of further atrocity crimes”.

“I can see no way that the latest evacuation orders, much less a full assault, in an area with an extremely dense presence of civilians, can be reconciled with the binding requirements of international humanitarian law and with the two sets of binding provisional measures ordered by the international court of justice.”

The IDF has said those displaced from Rafah will receive adequate food, water, shelter and sanitation in the humanitarian zone. But aid agencies describe acute overcrowding, limited and dirty water, almost no sanitation, and inadequate food supplies.

Volker said he was deeply distressed by fast-deteriorating conditions in Gaza, saying the latest evacuation orders had triggered “massive displacement of an already profoundly traumatised population”.

He said the towns supposed to receive those displaced from Rafah had already been “reduced to rubble”. Volker said a full scale offensive on Rafah “cannot take place” and called on all states with influence to do everything in their power to prevent it.

At least 35,034 Palestinian people have been killed and 78,755 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

Most of the casualties have been women and children, the health ministry has said, and thousands more bodies are likely to remain uncounted under rubble across Gaza.

Here is a video of Israelis who took to the streets in Tel Aviv on Saturday demanding that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government do more to secure the release of hostages being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip:

Stopping British arms sales to Israel if it launches a ground assault on Rafah in the Gaza Strip would strengthen Hamas, the UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, has said.

Israel ordered Palestinians to evacuate more of the southern city on Saturday in an indication it was pressing ahead with its plans for a ground attack, despite the US’s threat to withhold the supply of some weapons if it did so.

Cameron said he did not support an operation in Rafah in the absence of a plan to protect hundreds of thousands of civilians sheltering in the southern border city (see earlier post at 10.19 for more details).

However, Britain was in a “completely different position” to the US in terms of providing arms to Israel, he said, noting that the less than 1% of Israel’s weapons that came from Britain were already controlled by a strict licensing system.

“We could, if we chose to, make a sort of political message and say we are going to take that political step,” he told the BBC.

“The last time I was urged to do that (…), just a few days later there was a brutal attack by Iran on Israel, including 140 cruise missiles,” he added.

Cameron said the “better answer” would be for Hamas, which controls Gaza, to accept a hostage deal.

“Just to simply announce today we’re going to change our whole approach to arms exports rather than go through our careful process, it would strengthen Hamas, it would make a hostage deal less likely, I don’t think it would be the right approach,” he said.

Cameron’s claim that UK arms sales are not the same as those from the US to Israel could be challenged on the basis that the scale or supplier of the arms is immaterial, and the issue is whether the arms are being used in a way that could conflict with UK legal criteria about a risk of a serious breach of international humanitarian law.

Foreign Office officials said the next formal assessment of UK arms sales and the risk the arms may be used to commit a serious breach was imminent. The formal assessments are made on a six-week cycle, and the last assessment was completed at the end of March.

According to Reuters, the Israeli army have sent tanks back into al-Zeitoun, an eastern suburb of Gaza City, as well as al-Sabra, where residents have reported heavy bombardments that destroyed several houses, including high-rise residential buildings.

The army had claimed to have gained control of most of these areas months ago.