Israel moves forward with military operation in refugee enclave

WASHINGTON (CN) — Israel’s prime minister has directed the military to come up with a plan to evacuate more than a million refugees in Rafah ahead of a planned assault on the enclave, less than 24 hours after the Biden administration said it saw no indication of an imminent operation.

The White House was silent about the news on Friday as President Joe Biden met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Meanwhile, the president’s press team, Democrats in Congress, campaign surrogates and Vice President Kamala Harris spent the day trying to rebuke accusations that Biden’s memory and cognitive abilities are failing.

During an unscheduled news conference to discuss his cognition late Thursday night, however, Biden said Israel’s conduct in Gaza “has been over the top.”

“There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, and it’s got to stop,” he said.

The White House and State Department on Thursday said any operation against Rafah without considering the impact on civilians would be “a disaster” and Washington would not support it. But officials didn’t offer any concrete consequences Israel would face if it moved forward.

Rafah is the sole border crossing between the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. It is where more than 1.3 million refugees have fled from the rest of Gaza as Israel continues its war against Hamas since the latter’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Egypt has stymied the flow of refugees through the border to avoid a crisis in the Sinai Peninsula, leaving many camped out at the crossing with nowhere else to go.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas has four battalions stationed in Rafah and Israel cannot achieve its goals without eliminating them.

“[I]t is clear that intense activity in Rafah requires that civilians evacuate the areas of combat,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement Friday. “Therefore, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the IDF and the security establishment to submit to the Cabinet a combined plan for evacuating the population and destroying the battalions.”

It’s unclear how soon Israel plans to act and exactly where the refugees will be sent. Nearly 30,000 people have reportedly been killed in Gaza since the Israeli offensive started. Most of the casualties have been civilians.

Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority that has partial governing authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said Netanyahu’s plans were a significant escalation aimed at displacing the Palestinian population.

"Taking this step threatens security and peace in the region and the world,” Abbas’ office said. “It crosses all red lines."

While Congress was silent on the news Friday, it sparked outrage in the United Kingdom’s Parliament. The U.K. is one of the leading donors to the Israeli war effort behind the U.S.

Jeremy Corbyn, a former leader of Britain’s Labour Party, wrote online that if Israel attacks the refugee enclave it would make the West complicit in war crimes.

“This is not an ‘evacuation,’” he wrote online. “This is ethnic cleansing — and our government is complicit by letting Israel act with impunity.”

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