Tens of thousands of Palestinians were fleeing Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, on Saturday, after Israeli warnings to evacuate before an imminent military assault that will open a bloody new phase of the seven-month-long conflict.
Roads leading out of Rafah were choked with long columns of young and old, sick and healthy, riding in overloaded pick-up trucks and battered cars, in pony carts and on hand-pulled trolleys. Many walked, carrying their belongings, under a searing summer sun. Some were pushed in wheelchairs or even carried.
More than 150,000 people have fled Rafah – one of the largest displacements for many months – since the Israel Defense Forces ordered the evacuation of eastern neighbourhoods shortly before seizing the border crossing with Egypt to the east of the city on Tuesday in what the IDF said was a “precise, limited operation” to stop Hamas smuggling weapons or funds into Gaza.
We don’t. But when Israel announced on the 10. October that they will starve the population, that their focus is on damage, that they are fighting “Human animals” and that they don’t see any uninvolved civilians, that was the moment to stop it. And every single day since was a good moment to stop it. And form there on he holds full responsibility.
We must never forget that the US accepted and supported through their actions the Lebensraum expansion of illegal terror settlements into the occupied Palestinian territories.