Israel faces backlash after Rafah offensive deadline
#Israel has warned #Hamas to return hostages by March 10 or the #Rafah offensive will commence.
Israel’s Prime Minister has said that there would be a plan to evacuate civilians in Rafah
Israel’s Prime Minister has said that there would be a plan to evacuate civilians in Rafah
Transcript
00:00 There hasn't been a clear indication of exactly when this will happen apart from this one
00:06 statement by one of the members of the war cabinet who said yesterday that unless all
00:13 the hostages are released, there are around 100 hostages still believed to be alive and
00:19 held in Gaza, unless they are released by the Muslim holy month of Ramadan which begins
00:25 around March 10th, then this ground offensive will start into Rafa.
00:30 Now this is an offensive that the Israeli Prime Minister and the military have been
00:36 speaking about for quite a while.
00:38 The Prime Minister has made clear that this is the only way to win the war, that Hamas
00:42 must be crushed militarily and he says that Rafa is a bastion of Hamas.
00:49 However, because there has been increasing international pressure, he had said that there
00:53 would be a plan to evacuate civilians from the town.
00:57 Now this is where more than half of Gaza's population are now sheltering.
01:01 These are people who have been displaced from other parts of the Gaza Strip due to fighting
01:07 and due to evacuation orders.
01:09 He had said that ahead of any ground offensive into Rafa, there would be a plan for the evacuation
01:16 of the civilians.
01:17 Now when this plan will materialize and indeed where these people would go remains very unclear.
01:23 He had said that at some stage he had said that perhaps people could move further north
01:28 within the Gaza Strip but there are large swathes of Gaza that have been devastated
01:33 by aerial bombardment and there's no clear place where they could go.
01:38 So on that we're still very unclear.
01:40 And on the domestic front, Elena, how is the Israeli government dealing with this mounting
01:45 pressure from the international community?
01:52 Well Israel has doubled down on its determination to go after Hamas.
01:56 The government has also said that it is ruling out the possibility of the recognition of
02:03 a Palestinian state as a form of, as part of a solution.
02:08 There have been talks that have been held in Cairo for a ceasefire in return for hostages
02:14 being released.
02:15 These are talks that are being brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.
02:20 And it was talks like these that led to the release of more than 100 hostages back in
02:25 November when there was a pause in fighting.
02:28 But so far these talks don't appear to be going particularly well.
02:33 The Prime Minister has said that he sees no reason to send the Israeli delegation back
02:38 to Cairo because he says that Hamas is insisting on delusional demands, as he said.
02:45 So there's still a wide gap between the two.
02:48 And so far the government has been doubling down and insisting that there is only one
02:53 way to win this war and to win the release of the hostages, and that is military pressure.