Benjamin Netanyahu has said the “intense phase” of fighting in Rafah is “about to end,” promising that with its conclusion more troops will be sent to Israel’s border with Lebanon to confront Hezbollah.
The Israeli prime minister said the fight against Hamas terrorists in the southern Gaza city is almost over, without giving a specific timetable.
He told Israel’s Channel 14 that “after the end of the intense phase” in the Gaza Strip, Israel would “redeploy some forces to the north…mainly for defensive purposes.”
His comments come amid growing concerns in recent weeks that daily exchanges of cross-border fire between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah could escalate into an all-out war.
The Israeli military announced last week that plans for an offensive in Lebanon had been approved, to which Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah responded that no part of Israel would be spared in the event of a full-scale war.
Black smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike that targeted a house in the southern Lebanese village of Khiam, near the Lebanese-Israeli border, on June 21, 2024.
Plumes of smoke rise during ongoing battles in the Sultan neighborhood in northwest Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, June 18, 2024.
Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the “intense phase” of fighting in Rafah is “about to end”
Netanyahu’s interview, his first with Israeli media since the war began with the Hamas attack on October 7, was broadcast as his defense minister arrived in Washington to discuss the Gaza war and growing cross-border tensions with the movement. Hezbollah of Lebanon.
“The intense phase of the fight against Hamas is about to end,” Netanyahu said, adding: “It doesn’t mean that the war is about to end, but the war in its intense phase is about to end in Rafah.”
Israeli officials have described Rafah as the last Hamas stronghold in the Gaza Strip, and in early May troops entered the southern city, on the besieged territory’s border with Egypt, despite global alarm over the fate of Palestinian civilians taking refuge there.
The army seized the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing, a key conduit for desperately needed aid to Gaza that has remained closed since.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah said it had attacked military positions in northern Israel with attack drones, after an Israeli strike in eastern Lebanon killed the commander of another armed group, Jamaa Islamiya.
In Gaza, Israeli forces continued to attack targets and fight Hamas.
A woman holds a child surrounded by the rubble of buildings destroyed during the Israeli bombardment in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip, June 23, 2024.
Israeli soldiers during military operations in the southern Gaza Strip last month.
In Gaza City, doctors at Al-Ahli hospital said at least five people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a facility of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
The Israeli military said its planes attacked militants “operating from within buildings that formerly served as UNRWA headquarters.”
There was no immediate comment from UNRWA, whose facilities have been attacked before.
Some UNRWA buildings have been converted into shelters for Palestinians displaced during the war.
An early morning airstrike on a family home in another part of Gaza City killed at least seven people, the civil defense agency said.
An Israeli fire truck advances toward an attack site following a Hezbollah drone strike from Lebanon on June 23, 2024.
The October 7 attack on southern Israel killed 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
The militants also took hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, although the army says 41 are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,598 people, mostly civilians, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
“This war must end,” said Umm Siraj al-Balawi, struggling to survive in a makeshift shelter in the middle of a debris field, with hanging sheets protecting her young children from the scorching sun.
But despite the needs, “the delivery of any meaningful humanitarian assistance inside Gaza has become almost impossible and the very fabric of civil society is crumbling,” the European Union said in a statement.
As the war continues, Israeli protesters have taken to the streets week after week demanding greater efforts to bring the remaining hostages home.
In his interview on Sunday, Netanyahu said that if his government ends, “a left-wing government… will establish a Palestinian state,” calling it a threat to “our existence.”