In Rafah desperation grows as Israel ground assault looms
Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city is crammed with displaced, desperate and starving people, just as Israel threatens a fresh assault.
Gaza’s southernmost city is crammed with displaced, desperate and starving people, just as Israel threatens a fresh assault.
Rafah had a prewar population of around 250,000. Today the city on the Gaza-Egypt border has swelled to an estimated 1.4 million — more than half of Gaza’s population — many of them Palestinian civilians who fled the rest of the enclave as it was being bombed and partially demolished by Israeli forces.
Now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is signaling that Rafah may be the target of his next military offensive, which he says is a necessary step toward toppling Hamas. Displaced and trapped inside a city just a few miles wide, Palestinians sheltering there are now asking a seemingly unanswerable question.
“Where do we go?” Wissam Al-Arkan, 37, who has already moved twice inside Gaza since Oct. 7, told NBC News. “We came to Rafah and now they are threatening to invade it.”
This week, thousands of people are preparing to flee again, packing tents pitched on muddy ground between Rafah’s buildings and walls. They live among tangled, rusty wire, piles of trash and other detritus of war. Some concrete buildings are charred by blasts; others are wrecked. Some children play a game, throwing this blast debris against a wall. Adults sift through the dust and rubble for anything worth salvaging.
Rating: 5