‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 130: U.S. Senate votes to send additional $14 billion to Israel as catastrophic ground invasion of Rafah appears imminent

Casualties:

• 28,473+ killed* and at least 68,146 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
• 380+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
• Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,147.
• 569 Israeli soldiers killed since October 7, and at least 3,221 injured.**

*This figure was confirmed by Gaza’s Ministry of Health on Telegram channel. Some rights groups put the death toll number at more than 35,000 when accounting for those presumed dead.

** This figure is released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.”

Key Developments: 

• Palestinian PM: Israel wants to reshape demographic balance by killing Palestinians.
• Israeli Ministers ban UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories from Israel and occupied Palestinian territories. 
• Gaza Ministry of Health: Israeli forces killed 133 Palestinians and injured 162 in 24 hours. 
• Hamas: Three more Israeli captives die of wounds from Israeli air raids on Rafah.
• Countries and international organizations express alarm over anticipated Israeli assault on Rafah, where Israeli forces previously told hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to seek shelter.
• After meeting Jordan’s King Abdullah, U.S. President Joe Biden acknowledges Palestinian suffering but says Washington shares Israel’s goal of defeating Hamas.
• Israeli settlers shoot two Palestinians, including child, burn car, and throw Molotov cocktails south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank,
• Palestinian man killed by Israeli soldiers after being shot in chest, shoulders, and head in the occupied West Bank city of Qalqilya, according to Palestinian Health Ministry.
• U.S. Senate votes to send additional $14 billion to Israel as America continues bankrolling Israel’s genocidal war despite allegations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza

Panic and apprehension fill Rafah  

Peace is a dream for Gaza’s population, who have been living under the constant threat of Israeli attacks for over four months, leaving over 28,000 dead and almost 70,000 wounded. 

Rafah, bordering Egypt, is the last key city yet to be raided by Israeli troops. Its population, which has swelled to about 1.4 million as Palestinians have sought refuge there from across Gaza, is panicking as Israeli forces prepare a ground assault. 

Amnesty International says Rafah’s population has grown five times the size since October 7, reaffirming the harm Israel’s offensive will cause if they go through with the ground invasion and further escalate the already dire situation. 

“Most people in Rafah have already fled other areas of Gaza after being ordered by Israeli authorities to ‘evacuate,'” Amnesty said on X. “Civilians have nowhere to go to escape the bombardment and are facing the real and imminent risk of genocide.” 

Israeli forces have already begun intensifying their bombing campaign in the city and its surrounding areas in preparation. 

Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Rafah for Al Jazeera, said on Tuesday afternoon that Israeli bombardment has become concentrated in the central area of Gaza, leaving no options for people to flee Rafah in search of safety.

“Hundreds of Palestinians have started to flee Rafah city for the central area. They’re looking for refuge after heavy bombardment in overnight attacks. More residential homes are being attacked and destroyed. People are being squeezed into small parts of the Gaza Strip, turned largely into refugee camps,” Mahmoud continued.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has stressed in a recent situation report that increased air raids in Rafah “have heightened fears which would further hamper overstretched humanitarian operations.”

Describing Sunday’s overnight assault, Al Jazeera contributor Ahmed Abdullah Mohsen said: “The screaming and wailing nearly drowned out the warplanes that covered the sky, dropping barrages in a fiery belt that crushed the bodies of the displaced in their tents. About 20 minutes of explosions lit the night like something from an artificial Hollywood film.”

“The displaced and the injured fled en masse to the Kuwaiti Hospital, the only one open in the Shaboura area,” Mohsen continued.

“A doctor in the hospital helped a child who was taking his last breath to utter the final prayer. “

Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, said that each time Palestinians in Gaza are moved, “being told it will be a safer place, it has been proven the place was not safe.” 

The Palestinian Authority (PA) foreign ministry has called on all relevant parties to “prevent mass slaughter” in the southern Gaza Strip.

“Israel, the occupying power, and those who provide it with the diplomatic, military, and political cover are complicit in this genocide and are defying their obligations under international law as well as the ruling of the International Court of Justice,” it said in a statement. 

Famine-like conditions being created as a weapon of war 

Meanwhile, those who survive Israel’s ruthless attacks are at the risk of dying from preventable causes such as starvation and a lack of adequate medical care due to Israel’s ongoing military siege on the Gaza Strip. 

According to Beth Bechdol, the deputy director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), with each passing day, people in Gaza are “simply going hungry” and increasingly lacking any access to food, water, and medical services.

“There are unprecedented levels of acute food insecurity, hunger, and near-famine-like conditions in Gaza,” Bechdol said, adding that the FAO is unable to provide any agricultural production support in Gaza, as most of it has been damaged or destroyed. 

“Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food. In addition to the horror of that news, one other thing is true: That is a war crime. It is a textbook war crime,” Chris Van Hollen, an influential legislator from Biden’s Democratic Party, said in a Senate speech.

“And that makes those who orchestrate it war criminals.”

Regardless of these sentiments, Van Hollen later voted to send an additional $14 billion in aid to Israel (see more below). 

Dr. Athanasios Gargavanis, a trauma surgeon and emergency officer for the UN agency, added that a ceasefire is needed now so “health workers are able to deliver at the best of their capacities.”

“We are here to support the health system that’s suffering, not only because of the chronic blockade and this actual war, but also from the movement of population that impedes health workers to do their work in the best possible way,” Gargavanis said in a video posted on X.

Forced displacement

The question being echoed across the world is where will Palestinians go if Israel goes through with their ground assault on Rafah, where over half of Gaza’s population is seeking refuge. 

Even with the dire situation at hand, many Palestinians in Gaza refuse to flee their homeland to reach safety; including sixty-five-year-old Aziza al-Harazin who says, “We are not ready to leave our land. I was born here, many of my ancestors were born here, and I am not ready to give it up,” Harazin told Al Jazeera.

Another woman, who asked not to be identified, told Al Jazeera she had been displaced more than eight times since the war began and had to move with three young grandchildren.

“Rafah has been bombed more than 10 times near where we took refuge. Nowhere is safe here. We yearn for a ceasefire – for the peace that has become a dream for us.”

Still, Israel is determined to evacuate Gaza’s population from Rafah. It has even called on UN relief agencies to aid its evacuation efforts before its planned ground sweep of the city.

“We urge UN agencies to cooperate,” government spokesperson Eylon Levy said in a briefing, as cited by Al Jazeera. 

“Don’t say it can’t be done. Work with us to find a way,” Levy stated.  

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh says by “killing, destroying, and trying to displace Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, Israel wants to reshape the demographic balance to its advantage, after it shifted in favor of Palestine, for the first time since 1948”, reported Wafa.

At the weekly cabinet session held in Ramallah, Shtayyeh said that the past 400 days were the bloodiest in the contemporary history of Palestine.

“We have more than 100,000 Palestinians killed, wounded and missing in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, and more than 640 in the West Bank,” he claimed.

“There are also more than 10,000 detainees, and these are not numbers, but rather they indicate children, women, the elderly, young men and women, and they indicate our families and our people, each of them has a history, status, and name, and had a future that was killed by Israel,” Shtayyeh remarked. 

U.S. and Jordanian leaders meet 

On Monday, U.S. President Joe Biden and King Abdullah II of Jordan discussed strategies to end Israel’s war on Gaza during a meeting in the White House. The two leaders presented alternate views on the current situation in Gaza and its solution. 

Biden acknowledged Palestinian suffering in his remarks despite his “unwavering” support for Israel’s attacks on Gaza. 

“The United States shares the goal of seeing Hamas defeated and ensuring long-term security for Israel and its people,” Biden said, “The Palestinian people have also suffered unimaginable pain and loss. Too many of the over 27,000 Palestinians killed in this conflict have been innocent civilians … including thousands of children.”

“The major military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible plan for ensuring the safety and support of more than 1 million people sheltering there.”

His speech was followed by King Abdullah lamenting that his meeting with Biden comes as “one of the most devastating wars in recent history continues to unfold in Gaza.”

King Abdullah stressed that the world “cannot afford an Israeli attack on Rafah” that is “certain to produce another humanitarian catastrophe.” He added that what is needed is a “lasting ceasefire.”

“The separation of the West Bank and Gaza cannot be accepted,” and there can be no peace without a political solution that leads to an “independent, sovereign, and viable Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital,” the King continued.

Analyst Khaled Elgindy of the Middle East Institute think tank told Al Jazeera that the two leaders seem to have differences over Israel’s war on Gaza in both tone and substance.

“The King spoke with great urgency about a ceasefire now. The President talked about a six-week pause, which may or may not happen,” Elgindy said. 

“They’re encouraging the Israelis … to reconsider their opposition. But you don’t have that same sense of urgency, despite the very dire circumstances, particularly in Rafah,” he continued. 

Elgindy said that while King Abdullah was “very clear” in his remarks that there was no military solution to this crisis, there has been a “dissonance” in the Biden administration’s position.

He said the US appears “content to continue with Netanyahu in the driver’s seat, and there’s no real attempt to change Israel’s behavior in any meaningful way.”  

U.S. continues bankrolling genocide.  

U.S. pressure on Israel has come mainly in the form of public comments while the Biden administration continues bankrolling Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and provides international diplomatic support. 

On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate passed a $95.3 billion foreign aid package that includes $14 billion in military aid for Israel, reported the Associated Press. All Democratic senators voted for the bill except for Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Peter Welch of Vermont. Bernie Sanders, who is an independent and also from Vermont, also voted against the bill.

“I cannot in good conscience support sending billions of additional taxpayer dollars for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s military campaign in Gaza,” Welch said, according to the AP. “It’s a campaign that has killed and wounded a shocking number of civilians. It’s created a massive humanitarian crisis.”

While the vote was passed 70-29, the House of Representatives’ approval, where hardline Republicans oppose the legislation’s $60 billion support for Ukraine, is far from certain. It could be weeks or months before the bill is sent to Biden’s desk.

Recalling that Biden said last week that Israel’s onslaught on Gaza had been “over the top” and U.S. officials had repeatedly said that too many civilians are being killed in the besieged Palestinian enclave, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has suggested the U.S. rethink its military aid to Israel due to the high number of civilian casualties in the war on Gaza.

“Well, if you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people being killed,” Borrell told reporters after a meeting of EU development ministers in Brussels, according to Al Jazeera.

“If the international community believes that this is a slaughter, that too many people are being killed, maybe we have to think about the provision of arms,” Borrell added. 

Matthew Miller, U.S. Department of State spokesperson, has evaded questions on whether the U.S. would freeze assistance to Israel if it moves forward with an all-out attack on Rafah, reported Al Jazeera.

While the Biden administration has said an Israeli incursion into the packed city near the border with Egypt would be a “disaster,” Miller stated that it is not clear that cutting U.S. military assistance is a “step that would be more impactful than the steps we have already taken.”

International voices weigh in 

While limited material pressure is being put on Israel to halt its plans to expand its ground operation into Rafah, the country has been met with global scrutiny.

The UN’s human rights chief, Volker Turk, said it is “wholly imaginable what would lie ahead” if the planned incursion is not stopped.

“A potential full-fledged military incursion into Rafah, where some 1.5 million Palestinians are packed against the Egyptian border with nowhere further to flee, is terrifying, given the prospect that an extremely high number of civilians, again mostly children and women, will likely be killed and injured,” Turk said in a statement. 

Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a statement “strongly” condemning “Israel’s military aggression against Rafah city in Gaza and the resulting destruction and massacre of the Palestinian people.”

Pakistan’s statement says that an offensive on Rafah would “violate the provisional measures indicated by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to protect the people of Gaza from genocide.”

Pakistan also said that the planned incursion would “further aggravate the humanitarian disaster witnessed in Gaza” and “jeopardize the ongoing efforts for a potential ceasefire.”

Karim Khan, the prosecutor for the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court (ICC), said on X that he is “deeply concerned” by Israel’s bombardment of Rafah as well as reports of an anticipated Israeli ground offensive there.

“My Office has an ongoing and active investigation into the situation in the State of Palestine. This is being taken forward as a matter of the utmost urgency, with a view to bringing to justice those responsible for Rome Statute crimes,” Khan continued.

“All wars have rules and the laws applicable to armed conflict cannot be interpreted so as to render them hollow or devoid of meaning. This has been my consistent message, including from Ramallah last year. Since that time, I have not seen any discernible change in conduct by Israel.”

The ICC official also reiterated his call for the immediate release of those who continue to be held captive in Gaza. 

Meanwhile, the Netherlands is one of the few Western countries about to begin putting material pressure on Israel to hold its operations. On Monday, it was ordered by a Dutch court to block all exports of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel over concerns they were being used to violate international law during the war in Gaza.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement that they are “extremely concerned by Israel’s escalating attacks on the southern city of Rafah, following the destruction and massacres it has already inflicted on the Gaza Strip,” 

“We consider this operation as part of a plan to expel the people of Gaza from their own land,” it added. “We call on the international community, in particular the UN Security Council, to take the necessary steps to stop Israel,” the statement continued. 

The British foreign secretary, David Cameron, has also expressed apprehension regarding Israel’s current military strategy following its overnight attacks on Rafah.

“We think it is impossible to see how you can fight a war amongst these people. There’s nowhere for them to go,” the British foreign secretary told reporters.

“We are very concerned about the situation, and we want Israel to stop and think very seriously before it takes any further action. But above all, what we want is an immediate pause in the fighting, and we want that pause to lead to a ceasefire,” he said.