Panic is growing in Rafah over an imminent ground invasion after Israel\u2019s prime minister ordered his military to prepare to enter the city in the southern Gaza Strip that is sheltering 1.2 million people with nowhere else to go as he rejected Hamas\u2019s truce plan and rebuffed US efforts to reach a deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A new round of talks aimed at securing a truce with Hamas were set to open on Thursday in Egypt after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will not end the war and will push on until \u201ctotal victory\u201d over the Palestinian group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Visiting United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted on Wednesday that he still saw \u201cspace for agreement to be reached\u201d and was meeting on Thursday in Tel Aviv with Israel\u2019s war cabinet members Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot to discuss the release of captives being held in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are on the way to an absolute victory,\u201d Netanyahu said on Wednesday, adding that the operation would last months, not years. \u201cThere is no other solution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Israeli air strikes overnight on Rafah \u2013 which Israel had once declared a safe zone for displaced Palestinians \u2013 killed 14 people, including five children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Al Jazeera\u2019s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Rafah, said: \u201cWhat people are experiencing in the southern part of the Gaza Strip is a surge in attacks from air, land and sea.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Safia Marouf, a displaced Palestinian who sought refuge in Rafah with her family after being uprooted from their home farther north, said she is afraid of what\u2019s to come. \u201cThe children are scared all the time, and if we want to leave Rafah, we don\u2019t know where to go. What will be our destiny and that of our children?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said a ground invasion of Rafah would \u201cexponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Critical phase\u2019<\/strong> \u201cI think we have reached a point where we\u2019re really talking about operational aspects of the agreement, and what is happening behind closed doors is a real, genuine push towards that,\u201d Ahelbarra said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in March puts \u201cpolitical pressure on leaders in this part of the world\u201d, he said, adding that if Israeli attacks continue then \u201cI wouldn\u2019t see a chance of any deal in the near future.\u201d<<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hamas had laid out a three-phase plan to unfold over four and a half months that would see the release of all captives in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, including senior fighters, and an end to the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile there are some clear non-starters in Hamas\u2019s response, we do think it creates space for agreement to be reached, and we will work at that relentlessly,\u201d Blinken told reporters after meeting Netanyahu to discuss the Hamas counterproposal to a truce plan drawn up by US and Israeli spy chiefs and delivered to the Palestinian group last week by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, Al Jazeera\u2019s Rory Challands said Blinken \u201ccame to get a deal and he didn\u2019t get it\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe\u2019s still going to try to bridge the huge gap between Israel and Hamas. He might be right \u2013 there might be a chance. But at the moment, he\u2019s going back to Washington, DC, empty-handed,\u201d Challands said on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Panic is growing in Rafah over an imminent ground invasion after Israel\u2019s prime minister ordered his military to prepare to enter the city in the southern Gaza Strip that is sheltering 1.2 million people with nowhere else to go as he rejected Hamas\u2019s truce plan and rebuffed US efforts to reach a deal. A new …<\/p>","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":8583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[308,307,185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-308","category-main-news","category-palestinian-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8585,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8582\/revisions\/8585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Al Jazeera\u2019s Hashem Ahelbarra said the meeting in Egypt indicated that \u201cwe\u2019re moving towards a critical phase of any potential agreement between Israel and Hamas\u201d after senior Hamas leader Osama Hamdan said a delegation was going to Cairo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n