Live Updates: Israeli Tanks Enter Rafah and Take Control of Border Crossing
"A military official said the scope of the operation was limited and aimed at destroying Hamas targets. The United Nations warned that the crossing’s closure could worsen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
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Displaced Palestinians fleeing Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.
Pinned
The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it had sent tanks into Rafah and established control over the Gaza side of the border crossing with Egypt in what it called a limited operation. The move halted the flow of aid into the enclave, drawing immediate condemnation from international officials.
The incursion — which the military said was aimed at destroying Hamas targets used to attack Israeli soldiers — did not appear to be the long-promised full ground invasion of Rafah, which Israel’s allies have been working to avert by pushing for a cease-fire deal. It came after a dizzying day that saw Israel order people to evacuate parts of the city, then Hamas claims that it had accepted the terms of a cease-fire, followed by an announcement by Israel’s military that it was carrying out “targeted strikes” in eastern Rafah.
Amid concerns about the impact that Israel's closure of the Rafah crossing would have on humanitarian aid, COGAT, the Israeli agency overseeing aid deliveries into Gaza, said that 60 trucks had passed through the Erez crossing from Israel into northern Gaza on Tuesday.
A Palestinian doctor at a medical center in Rafah said on Tuesday that 27 bodies had been brought there since the start of Israel’s incursion, in which ground troops entered the southeast corner of Gaza and took control of the Gazan side of a border crossing with Egypt.
Dr. Suhaib Hems, the head of Kuwait Hospital in Rafah, said that his facility had also received 150 injured people, many of whom suffered from shattered bones, serious head injuries or severe burns.
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Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, a rival to Hamas, called on the United States to intervene to prevent the conflict and humanitarian crisis from escalating any further.
The tit-for-tat strikes between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah that have been going on for months continued along Israel’s northern border. The Israeli military said that “a number of suspicious aerial targets” had been launched from Lebanon, and that Israeli forces had also struck targets across the border. Hezbollah confirmed that it had launched a drone attack into Israel.
With its seizure of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Tuesday, Israel has now closed two key crossings for aid into Gaza, drawing sharp warnings from international agencies and officials who said the moves could exacerbate an already dire humanitarian crisis in the enclave.
Since the start of the war, Israel had limited aid entering the Gaza Strip to the two tightly controlled border crossings: Kerem Shalom and Rafah, which both access the enclave’s south.
Israeli troops have “choked off” the two main arteries for getting aid into Gaza, the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings, according to Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N. humanitarian office. U.N. staff have been blocked from accessing the Rafah crossing, he said in a news briefing, adding that if fuel is not able to enter the enclave for some time, “it would be a very effective way of putting the humanitarian operation in its grave.”
A video released by the Israeli military showed some of its vehicles driving inside Gaza along the border wall with Egypt on Tuesday morning. Drone footage in the video showed at least six tanks in the circular lot that serves the Rafah crossing’s main building and a mosque.
Another video circulating on social media and verified by The New York Times showed a military vehicle destroying a sign in the area that read “I ❤️ Gaza.” Other video footage verified by the Storyful social media news agency shows a military vehicle destroying a separate Gaza sign near the main building.
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Egypt’s foreign ministry condemned the Israeli operation in Rafah, saying Israeli control over the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt jeopardized humanitarian aid shipments, as well as the ability of Gazans to leave the strip for medical treatment. “This dangerous escalation threatens the lives of more than a million Palestinians who depend primarily on this crossing, as it is the main lifeline of the Gaza Strip,” the statement said.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said it “condemned in the strongest terms” the Israeli military’s closure of the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings into Gaza, which are important routes for shipments of food and other aid. “The situation in the east of Rafah Governorate is a true humanitarian catastrophe,” it said.
Forty-six injured and sick people were not able to leave the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing on Tuesday for treatment abroad after Israel took control of it, according to Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian side of the crossing. Those who were set to travel have breast cancer, myelofibrosis and lymphoma, among other ailments, the Gaza health ministry said.
Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s top diplomat, has again expressed concern about civilian casualties in Rafah. “The land offensive against Rafah has started again, despite all the requests of the international community, the U.S., European Union member states, everybody asking Netanyahu not to attack Rafah,” he told reporters in Brussels ahead of a meeting. “I am afraid that this is going to cause again a lot of casualties, civilian casualties, whatever they say.”
Rocket warning sirens are sounding in Kerem Shalom near the border with Gaza, according to Israel’s military. Hamas rockets killed four Israeli soldiers on Sunday in the area, which has a border crossing that has been a conduit for aid to enter the enclave.
The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, said it had fired on gatherings of soldiers in the border region between Israel and Gaza.
All of the employees of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza left the facility before Israeli forces entered Rafah, Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the crossing, told reporters.
The main United Nations agency that aids Palestinians in Gaza has warned that “catastrophic hunger faced by people especially in northern Gaza will get much worse” if aid supply routes through the Rafah border crossing, which Israeli forces took control of this morning, are interrupted.
The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, said it was firing mortars on Israeli forces east of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza.
The Egyptian state-owned television channel Al Qahera reported that the Israeli military had full control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing. Sporadic fighting could be heard, and all humanitarian aid had stopped, according to the channel.
Leading Israeli news sites published photographs on Tuesday morning that the military said were not official. The images showed the Israeli flag flying on poles and tanks on the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing. Their dissemination appeared to be directed at the domestic audience as much as the Palestinian public.
The Israeli military released photos of its forces operating on the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Tuesday, including at least three tanks.
Israel’s allies, including the United States, have warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to not send the military on a ground assault in Rafah, where nearly a million Gazans are sheltering. The military on Tuesday said that the overnight operation was limited. It was unclear if this was the start of a broader operation.
The Israeli military said that the overnight strikes in eastern Rafah, which included air attacks and ground operations, were aimed at destroying Hamas targets. Tanks are now in control of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, where Israeli officials believe Hamas fired shells from on Sunday, killing Israeli soldiers at the Kerem Shalom border crossing.
The proposal for a hostage-prisoner exchange and cease-fire that Hamas said on Monday that it could accept has minor wording changes from the one that Israel and the United States had presented to the group recently, according to two officials familiar with the revised proposal.
The officials said that the changes were made by Arab mediators in consultation with William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, and that the new version keeps a key phrase, the eventual enactment of a “sustainable calm,” wording that all sides had said earlier they could accept.
Within the course of days, hopes for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip have been raised, dashed and raised again, with no clear explanation.
The confusion was evident on Monday, when Hamas claimed to have accepted the terms of a truce deal even as Israel — a week after making concessions in the hope of an agreement — was ordering civilians in the southern Gazan city of Rafah to evacuate and escalating its airstrikes there. Then on Tuesday, the Israeli military said it had sent tanks into Rafah and taken over the Gaza side of the border crossing with Egypt, halting the flow of aid into the enclave.
With negotiations for a hostage release and cease-fire facing new uncertainty, and Israel’s military calling on Monday for tens of thousands of Palestinians to evacuate part of Rafah, Hamas’s last bastion in southern Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has made a risky gambit. He seems to have opted for an invasion of the city, ignoring the urgings of international allies, in what many Israelis view as a bid for his political survival.
To move into Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have taken refuge in recent months, would be to defy warnings of the inevitable suffering it would cause the civilian population. The Biden administration has urged restraint.
Israel stepped up attacks on Monday in the southern city of Rafah hours after Hamas said it would accept the terms of a cease-fire plan drawn from a proposal by Egyptian and Qatari mediators.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said that while the new proposal failed to meet Israel’s demands, the country would still send a working-level delegation to talks in hopes of reaching an acceptable deal. Qatar also said that it would send a delegation for the talks, in Cairo."
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