Rafah’s offensive worries humanitarian workers

Amid logistical headaches and uncertainty, NGOs are worried about Israel’s large-scale military operation in Rafah, a small town in the Gaza Strip that has been overpopulated and devastated by more than six months of war.
“We have prepared that we will have to deploy more or less aid depending on the situation, but the reality is that we have no idea what to expect,” explains Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam’s advocacy officer.

The British organization, along with twelve non-governmental organizations, issued a call for a ceasefire on April 3, recalling that 1.3 million civilians, including at least 610,000 children, are in Rafah “directly in the line of fire.”
For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kept repeating: there will be an operation on Rafah.

Rafa is tiny, like a village, and therefore an operation in such a cramped and densely populated place can only lead to mass slaughter.

After six months of attacks and fierce fighting, the Palestinian Islamist movement reportedly maintains four battalions in a major city in the far south of the Gaza Strip, on the border with Egypt.
Israel says it is working on various evacuation plans, specifically mentioning “humanitarian islands.”

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said he was studying “a number of measures to be taken in preparation for operations in Rafah, especially for the evacuation of civilians.”
Non-governmental organizations interviewed by AFP say they were not informed of these measures; and the Israeli military was unable to respond to AFP regarding its exchanges with humanitarian actors.

The ministry has already acquired 30,000 tents, a third of which must be deployed in the next two weeks near Rafah, according to sources in the Israeli press, without knowing exactly which side of the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.
“I have no idea what this project means,” commented the director of the Office for Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), Andrea de Domenico.

“Of course, we don’t know exactly what form this offensive will take, but what is certain is that there will be, on the one hand, a reduction in the available aid, and on the other hand, a large number of people who are moved,” says Jean-Raphaël Poitou , Action Against Hunger (ACF) Middle East Manager.

In Rafah, which has grown from about 250,000 to more than 1.3 million, Gazans would have several options: tear down the walls and barbed wire that separate the city from Egypt, try to return to the north of the Gaza Strip the military currently prohibits – or rush to Mediterranean Sea.

“Rafah is small, it’s like a village, so an operation in such a cramped and densely populated place can only lead to mass slaughter,” warns Mrs. Khalidi.
Oxfam in particular fears that it will have to suspend its activities in Rafah, where half of its offices and the buildings that house its teams are located.

Ms. Khalidi explains that it is difficult to predict where services might go when about 60% of buildings have been destroyed or damaged throughout the Gaza Strip, and the territory is still bombed or littered with unexploded bombs.
Other organizations fear the aid delivery network, a topic they have clashed with Israeli authorities since the start of the war.

The offensive would “cut us off from our vital artery: the Rafah crossing,” explains Ahmed Bayram, spokesman for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in the Middle East.
This terminal is actually the most used entry point into Gaza. It enables serving the entire territory where food and medicine reserves have been depleted for months and where nothing is produced.

“Our teams are already struggling to keep up with the growing demands on the ground,” he describes.
And to list the difficulties: shortage of everything, including energy, explosion in the number of wounded, health system on land, relying almost exclusively on field hospitals in Rafah…

“The current conditions do not allow humanitarian operations to be carried out on the necessary scale, so imagine what fighting on the ground in Rafah would entail, it would be a leap into the abyss,” summarized the United Nations employee for AFP.

Asked by AFP during a press briefing at United Nations headquarters in New York, Mr de Domenico added that the opening of the Erez (North) crossing should be accompanied by the security of a nearby warehouse.
According to him, the efforts made by humanitarians will have to be “gigantic”.
However, there is no question of taking the initiative to already establish emergency reception camps: “We will not rush the movement or encourage it,” he explained.

“We must be ready to provide humanitarian aid wherever people are, but the United Nations does not participate in forced displacement,” adds a United Nations employee in Jerusalem.
“Besides, there’s not much room for it.”