Over the weekend, Israeli plans to advance on the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip after the current battle around Khan Younis were met with harsh criticism by several European officials, including the German Foreign Minister.
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had announced that after the current focus of fighting in the Gaza Strip, Khan Younis, would be brought under control, the IDF would advance on Rafah.
Rafah lies on the Strip’s southern border with Egypt and as the last major town in the Strip that the IDF’s ground offensive hasn’t targeted, is still under Hamas control.
“The operation in the Khan Yunis area is progressing and yielding impressive results. We are achieving our missions in Khan Yunis, and we will also reach Rafah and eliminate terror elements that threaten us,” Gallant said during an operational situation assessment in Khan Yunis on Thursday.
This was met with panicked remarks by several European and UN officials on Saturday.
The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said that despite Israel claiming that the area near the border was a safe zone, around 1 million Palestinians were “displaced progressively against the Egyptian border,” and are now subject to bombing which is “creating a very dire situation.”
He also claimed that this could torpedo the negotiations with Hamas over the release of the 136 Israeli hostages who remain captive in the Gaza Strip.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that she had hear Gallant’s statement “with horror.”
“To advance now in Rafah, the last and most crowded place, as the Israeli Defense Minister announced, could simply not be justified,” she said Saturday.
Baerbock added that she had been telling the Israeli government for some time now that “Gazans couldn’t simply disappear into thin air.”
The minister from Germany’s far-left Green Party continued to demand a new ceasefire to free the hostages and end the “daily inhuman suffering of children and civilians,” and added that she was opposed to the dissolution of UNRWA.
Like many countries in Europe, Germany at first was very supportive of Israel in the wake of October 7, but has since increasingly criticized its war effort and called for a ceasefire.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, who in the past has repeatedly drawn the ire of Israeli representatives for making anti-Israeli statements, also said he was “deeply worried” about Gallant’s comments.
Türk said this had set off “alarm bells for massive civilian casualties & further displacement” for the “already vulnerable Palestinians ordered into Rafah by IDF.”
Last November, Türk accused Israel of committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip. “The collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians is also a war crime, as is unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians,” he said.