JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted his troops will advance on the Gazan city of Rafah, defying outside pleas for a reconsideration.
French President Emmanuel Macron was the latest to warn Netanyahu, telling him the human cost of Israel’s operation in Gaza was “unbearable”.
But Mr Netanyahu ordered his army to prepare for a ground attack.
Approximately 1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah, which has already been bombed.
Netanyahu vowed to continue the “strong” offensive and said Hamas, the group that controls Gaza, must be removed from the southern city.
“We will fight until complete victory and this includes a powerful action also in Rafah after we allow the civilian population to leave the battle zones,” Netanyahu said further.
President Macron telephoned Netanyahu on Wednesday to say that Israel’s operations in Gaza “must end.”
He expressed France’s “firm opposition to the Israeli offensive in Rafah, which could only lead to a humanitarian catastrophe of a new scale”.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, on a visit to Israel, warned that people in Rafah who have nowhere to go cannot “just vanish into thin air”.
Spain and the Republic of Ireland have asked the EU, of which they are members, to “urgently” verify that Israel is complying with its human rights obligations in Gaza under the rights-to-trade agreement.
The Ministry of Health in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian Territory says at least 28,576 people, mostly women and children, have been killed as a result of the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
Israel intervened after Hamas-led militants killed at least 1,200 people and took 253 hostages in a surprise attack on its territory on October 7.
In the earlier days of the war, Israel instructed Palestinians to seek refuge in Rafah while the Israeli army advanced against northern cities.
Rafah is the southernmost part of Gaza and represents the crossing to Egypt, where humanitarian aid has been allowed into the strip.
Now Israeli authorities want civilians to move into what they call a “humanitarian zone” — a thin strip of mostly agricultural land along the Mediterranean coast known as al-Mawasi.
Another town, Khan Younis, has so far been the center of Israeli operations in southern Gaza.
Thousands of displaced Palestinians sought refuge there at Nasser Hospital, but are now under evacuation orders as well.
Netanyahu’s pledge to press ahead came after peace talks with US, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials ended in a stalemate.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said Hamas had not made any new offer for a hostage deal and Israel would not accept what it said the militant group’s ridiculous demands.
“Hamas’s change of attitude will make it possible to advance negotiations,” he added.
