[KurtFF8]

Source

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -The United States has proposed an alternative draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a temporary ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war and opposing a major Israeli ground offensive in Rafah in southern Gaza, according to the text seen by Reuters on Monday.

Washington has been averse to the word ceasefire in any U.N. action on the Israel-Hamas war, but the U.S. draft text echoes language that President Joe Biden said he used last week in conversations with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The U.S. draft text "determines that under current circumstances a major ground offensive into Rafah would result in further harm to civilians and their further displacement including potentially into neighboring countries."

Israel plans to storm Rafah, where more than 1 million of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza have sought shelter, prompting international concern that such a move would sharply worsen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The draft U.S. resolution says such a move "would have serious implications for regional peace and security, and therefore underscores that such a major ground offensive should not proceed under current circumstances."

It was not immediately clear when or if the draft resolution would be put to a vote in the 15-member council. A resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Britain, Russia or China to be adopted.

The U.S. put forward the text after Algeria on Saturday requested the council vote on Tuesday on its draft resolution, which would demand an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield quickly signaled that it would be vetoed.

REJECTS BUFFER ZONE

Algeria put forward an initial draft resolution more than two weeks ago. But Thomas-Greenfield said the text could jeopardize "sensitive negotiations" on hostages. The U.S., Egypt, Israel and Qatar are seeking to negotiate a pause in the war and the release of hostages held by Hamas.

Washington traditionally shields its ally Israel from U.N. action and has twice vetoed council resolutions since Oct. 7. But it has also abstained twice, allowing the council to adopt resolutions that aimed to boost aid to Gaza and called for urgent and extended humanitarian pauses in fighting.

The draft U.S. text would condemn calls by some Israeli government ministers for Jewish settlers to move to Gaza and would reject any attempt at demographic or territorial change in Gaza that would violate international law.

The resolution would also reject "any actions by any party that reduce the territory of Gaza, on a temporary or permanent basis, including through the establishment officially or unofficially of so-called buffer zones, as well as the widespread, systematic demolition of civilian infrastructure."

Reuters reported in December that Israel told several Arab states that it wants to carve out a buffer zone inside Gaza's borders to prevent attacks as part of proposals for the enclave after the war ends.

The war began when fighters from the Hamas militant group that runs Gaza attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. In retaliation, Israel launched a military assault on Gaza that health authorities say has killed more than 28,000 Palestinians with thousands more bodies feared lost amid the ruins.

In December, more than three-quarters of the 193-member U.N. General Assembly voted to demand an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. General Assembly resolutions are not binding but carry political weight, reflecting a global view on the war.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has long called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. U.N. aid chief Martin Griffith warned last week that military operations in Rafah "could lead to a slaughter."

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

A pretty major development if this happens.

[wat0n]

Not really, since there are outs in that resolution. I think it's clear Israel shouldn't attempt taking Rafah without evacuating the civilians there, which is what "current circumstances" is making reference to. It would be even better if taking Rafah was not necessary at all by just getting to an arrangement where Hamas surrenders and releases the hostages in exchange for being allowed safe passage out of Gaza.

Netanyahu has already ordered the IDF to propose an evacuation plan for letting civilians move back into northern Gaza, and I think he has no rush to end the war since that means Israel will go to elections which he'll lose. One may wonder, though, just how long can Netanyahu hold for. After all, if there's a multiple month ceasefire or just an informal lull to the fighting then an Israeli election would become feasible anyway.

[KurtFF8]

At this point if the IOF orders civilians to leave Rafah, they have then ordered all civilians to leave Gaza completely. Text book definition of ethnic cleansing.

[wat0n]

At this point if the IOF orders civilians to leave Rafah, they have then ordered all civilians to leave Gaza completely. Text book definition of ethnic cleansing.

The Israeli plan is to evacuate them back to northern Gaza, as far as I'm aware.

[KurtFF8]

The Israeli plan is to evacuate them back to northern Gaza, as far as I'm aware.

Source?

[Deutschmania]

This morning the Israeli military ordered more than a million people in northern Gaza to evacuate within twenty-four hours. That’s half the population of the Gaza Strip, an area about the size of Philadelphia. The Gaza Strip is hemmed in on three sides by fences and walls, and the Israeli navy patrols its coast. Its crossings with Israel and Egypt are sealed. There’s nowhere to go, except—for some—to relatives’ overcrowded homes in the southern half of the strip.

The evacuation order came amid a barrage of air strikes that, as of Friday, had killed 1,900 people in Gaza, including at least 583 children, according to the Gaza health ministry. Israel launched the strikes after an unprecedented attack by Hamas-led fighters, who on the morning of October 7 crossed the border into Israel and massacred Israeli civilians, killing hundreds and taking dozens hostage, including children, people with disabilities, and older people. The fighters ambushed young partygoers at an outdoor dance party, reportedly killing 260, shot families inside their homes, and set fire to other homes to force the families out. Since then, armed groups in Gaza have indiscriminately fired thousands of rockets at Israeli cities and towns. Those atrocities amount to war crimes, as does Hamas’s threat to execute some of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

But the fact that Hamas-led fighters committed unspeakable war crimes does not give the Israeli military permission to flout its obligations to civilians in Gaza. The evacuation announcement risks mass forced displacement. The evacuation zone that the Israeli military designated today is home to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people, including children, people with disabilities, older people, and hospital patients. The roads in Gaza are strewn with rubble from destroyed buildings, and fuel is scarce after the Israeli authorities cut supplies of fuel, water, food, and electricity to Gaza in what amounts to a form of collective punishment—itself a war crime.

Civilians in Gaza have not had an opportunity to flee safely. The Gaza health ministry said that seventy people were killed Friday by Israeli air strikes as they fled south via the route that the Israeli military designated. Gaza’s main hospital, Shifa, is in the evacuation zone, so the order also makes it extremely difficult for people to access medical care—not to mention the fact that the hospital is itself impossible to evacuate. A spokesperson for the Gaza health ministry, Doctor Ashraf Al-Qudra, reported that Shifa is running out of fuel for generators, medicine, and other supplies, even as the number of people injured in the air strikes tops seven thousand.

Parties to an armed conflict always have an obligation to protect civilians, even when their opponents fail to do so. That’s because the laws of war, known as international humanitarian law, enshrine basic principles of humanity that are nonnegotiable. The Israeli military should issue warnings to civilians in Gaza in advance of an attack if doing so would actually allow them to leave safely, and for a safer area. But a warning to flee when there’s no safe place to go and no safe way to get there is not an effective warning.

The evacuation order, which the International Committee of the Red Cross has deemed “not compatible with international humanitarian law,” does not give the Israeli military license to harm the civilians who remain. The United Nations has warned that the order will have “devastating consequences” and instead urged the Israeli government to open a humanitarian corridor to supply civilians, including with water. UN Secretary General António Guterres called on Israel to rescind the order, noting the impossibility of so many vulnerable, undersupplied Gaza residents actually evacuating safely. The order makes a mockery of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s request that Israel avoid harm to civilians in Gaza.

Israel’s evacuation order hit a particularly raw nerve for the 70 percent of Gaza residents who are already refugees—having fled their homes in what is now Israel in 1948—and their descendants. They have never been allowed back. That refusal of their right to return is one of the root causes of the current violence. It also made this morning’s order feel particularly terrifying. Some of the older people fleeing northern Gaza today remember the homes they fled seventy-five years ago, as the Israeli military then, too, approached their cities, towns, and villages. They remember, also, that they were not allowed to come back. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/13/nowhere-go-gaza

Twelve-year-old Hamoud el Zeik picks up a pile of folded blankets and carries them across the sandy ground towards a waiting donkey.

The young boy has already moved 10 times with his family throughout this war to escape fighting in Gaza.

Now they're on the move again.

"We want to rest," he sighs, as he and his siblings lug the family's few possessions away.ABC News Homepage
Rafah was supposed to be Gaza's 'safe zone', but more than a million Palestinians are now grappling with whether to flee again



Twelve-year-old Hamoud el Zeik picks up a pile of folded blankets and carries them across the sandy ground towards a waiting donkey.

The young boy has already moved 10 times with his family throughout this war to escape fighting in Gaza.

Now they're on the move again.

"We want to rest," he sighs, as he and his siblings lug the family's few possessions away.

A young boy hugs a pile of blankets to his chest as he walks across a tarp with scattered belongings on it
Hamoud el Zeik packs up his family's belongings.(ABC News)
The el Zeik family has been sheltering in Gaza's most southern city Rafah, which was declared a so called "safe zone" by Israel in the first weeks of the war.

Since then, Israel has carried out more than 290 air or drone strikes in the Rafah administrative area, killing at least 2,110 people including civilians, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

After Israel announced its plan to invade Rafah, Hamoud's father Zaher made the difficult decision to move his family for an 11th time.

"You can see how we are living, the situation is dire," he says.

Zaher has been tearing down the wooden structure of the makeshift tent that the family has been living in since arriving in Rafah earlier this year.

Before that, they'd fled from the north, seeking shelter in residential buildings, hospitals and even in the grounds of an ambulance station. Zaher's decision to flee again was cemented after Israel launched a series of air strikes into Rafah earlier this week.

At least 67 people were killed in the bombings according to Palestinian authorities, including large numbers of civilians.

Israel said the strikes were providing cover for its military forces to rescue two hostages being held by Hamas in Rafah.

But the night-time offensive stoked terror and panic for Palestinians and a forewarning of what could come next. "[It was] so intense. My wife and children were very scared," Zaher says.

"Around us at least 15 tents have moved out of here [now]. We thought we'd rather move out with our belongings, instead of losing everything."

There isn't a lot for the el Zeik family to move — some foam mattresses, a couple of garbage bags of clothes, four bottles of water and two bags of rice.

They are moving to Nuseirat in central Gaza, where Palestinians are still being killed by Israeli air strikes.

Cars, flatbed trucks and donkeys packed with similar possessions clog the roads out of Rafah, in a sign that other Palestinians are also leaving. 'We have nowhere to go, we have nobody'
More than 1 million people who had fled fighting have been packed into this city, which straddles the border with Egypt.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he asked his military to develop a plan to "evacuate" Palestinians from Rafah before an invasion occurs. Yesterday, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong described a ground invasion of Rafah as "unjustifiable", adding that it would bring further devastation to more than a million civilians seeking shelter.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese later released a joint statement with his counterparts in Canada and New Zealand, urging Israel to not to go down the "catastrophic" path of an expanded military operation.

"We are gravely concerned by indications that Israel is planning a ground offensive into Rafah. A military operation into Rafah would be catastrophic," the statement read.

"We urge the Israeli government not to go down this path. There is simply nowhere else for civilians to go."

Huge swathes of residential buildings and infrastructure have been demolished elsewhere in the Gaza Strip and on-the-ground fighting and aerial attacks are still a danger.

Im Bahaa has also packed up her meagre possessions and children onto a donkey.

She's already fled six times before.

Im is desperate to protect her children, after her husband was killed in the war along with about 28,000 other Palestinians.She says she will move to Zawaida in central Gaza — an area that's been hit by air strikes this week.

"We are afraid for us and our children," she says.

"We have nowhere to go to. We know nobody.

"When they started bombing Khan Younis it was almost over our head, we left for Rafah.

"And now, they talk about raiding Rafah so we are leaving back north without knowing what will happen to us." Im becomes emotional when she describes how her husband died after the building he was in collapsed.

"We are done with wars," she cries out.

"We are displaced, our husbands died, our children died, our homes collapsed, we moved from one place to the other; it is only war and destruction.

"We don't want war. We don't want blood — not in their place, not in ours.

"They were harmed, so are we. We want peace between our two people."Mr Netanyahu has said a ground offensive in Rafah is needed to thwart the last bastion of Hamas, which he claims is hiding out in the city.

Israel also suspects several of the 130-plus remaining hostages could be found inside Rafah.

But there are some displaced Palestinians in the city that are determined they won't be moved again, including 30 year-old Bilal Kassa.

He has been sheltering in the same area of Rafah that was the target of this week's Israeli air strikes . "Where can we go? Where can we go? There is no safe place," he says.

"We are remaining here. We won't leave.

"We left once and they destroyed our house. Next time, we won't leave.

"We suffered. Enough with injustice, enough with lack of dignity.

"We'd rather live with dignity at least, [and] we prefer to die as martyrs."

Other Palestinians in Rafah feel paralysed about whether to stay or go.

"We don't know what to do anymore," says Mohammed Lulu.

"We are waiting for the Israelis to tell us where the safe place is to go to.

"[But] there is not a single safe place in the whole country. We are waiting to see where to go."

Israel is yet to indicate when it plans to launch the ground invasion, but says civilians will be given a chance to leave the area. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-16/rafah-civilians-flee-before-israel-ground-invasion-gaza/103469364

[wat0n]

Source?

In response to a question from The Times of Israel on whether there had been plans to enter Gaza’s southernmost city earlier, at the beginning of the ground offensive, and, if so, why that step had not been taken then, Netanyahu expanded on the government’s efforts to cope with the refugees in Rafah.

“I won’t get into our plans,” the premier responded, but “there is a lot of space north of Rafah” to evacuate the civilians sheltering there. “There will be space for evacuation.

“We have to do this in an orderly fashion — and that’s the instruction I’ve given to the IDF.”

I think it's a no-brainer. Much of what's north of Gaza has been heavily damaged or destroyed as one would expect in a war, but where else would Gazans move to?

[KurtFF8]

I think it's a no-brainer. Much of what's north of Gaza has been heavily damaged or destroyed as one would expect in a war, but where else would Gazans move to?

(This source does not back up the claim made)

And yes, there's no where for the population to go at this point. Hence why terms like ethnic cleansing and genocide are appropriate to describe what Israel is doing.

[wat0n]

(This source does not back up the claim made)

That's exactly what Netanyahu is hinting at.

And yes, there's no where for the population to go at this point. Hence why terms like ethnic cleansing and genocide are appropriate to describe what Israel is doing.

Northern Gaza is still there, awaiting to be rebuilt and free of Hamas.

[Pants-of-dog]

Are the civilians supposed to wait until.their homes are rebuilt before seeking refuge in the north?

If not, then the only "safe" place is a pile.of rubble with no services,no clean water, and no access to medical care.

[KurtFF8]

That's exactly what Netanyahu is hinting at.

Source?

Northern Gaza is still there, awaiting to be rebuilt and free of Hamas.

This is an article from two hours ago: Israel calls on residents of two Gaza City neighbourhoods to flee

So you're not only wrong, but your point just doesn't make any sense here, @wat0n

[late]

Northern Gaza is still there, awaiting to be rebuilt and free of Hamas.

It's devastated.

On top of that, how does a dying people rebuild when they can't get food or water or medicine, or building supplies.

You were inane earlier, I shall ponder adding another letter to that..

[wat0n]

Source?

Already posted, you're in denial.

This is an article from two hours ago: Israel calls on residents of two Gaza City neighbourhoods to flee

So you're not only wrong, but your point just doesn't make any sense here, @wat0n

...Which is why the displaced Gazans are not being told to return right now, among other things. Israel is still conducting mop up operations in the north, even though it has been placed under overall Israeli control.

However, Netanyahu's suggestion does point towards a return to the north.

Are the civilians supposed to wait until.their homes are rebuilt before seeking refuge in the north?

If not, then the only "safe" place is a pile.of rubble with no services,no clean water, and no access to medical care.

Provisional arrangements can be made to allow for their return, no different to those made after ISIS was defeated in Mosul and its residents were allowed to return there and rebuild it.

It's devastated.

On top of that, how does a dying people rebuild when they can't get food or water or medicine, or building supplies.

You were inane earlier, I shall ponder adding another letter to that..

Certainly, allowing the return of the northern Gaza residents will be done with a large humanitarian operation to provide them with the most essential services, again, not unlike what was done in Mosul in 2017 and 2018.

Why else do you think that Netanyahu ordered the IDF to come up with a plan to allow civilians to return north? That alone means the offensive to take Rafah will take a while.

Furthermore, the return of northern Gaza residents is necessary for reconstruction to begin.

[Pants-of-dog]

So, yes, the idea is to bomb all of Gaza and force the population to move somewhere they cannot live and will be bombed in the future.

[wat0n]

No, the idea is to allow Gazans to return to the areas where Hamas has been removed so they can begin the reconstruction after the war and so Hamas can be defeated in Rafah, if it comes to that.

It's odd to see those whining about ethnic cleansing not wanting to see displaced Gazans return to their homes. Here you're very much in line with people like Ben Gvir and Smotrich.

[late]

Certainly, allowing the return of the northern Gaza residents will be done with a large humanitarian operation to provide them with the most essential services, again, not unlike what was done in Mosul in 2017 and 2018.

Why else do you think that Netanyahu ordered the IDF to come up with a plan to allow civilians to return north? That alone means the offensive to take Rafah will take a while.

Furthermore, the return of northern Gaza residents is necessary for reconstruction to begin.

Netanyahu is talking about a new major assault.

Guess what that's going to do to humanitarian efforts? It's not hard, give it a f***ing try.

What you have is fantasy.

[Pants-of-dog]

If the home has been destroyed by the IDF, it is impossible for people to return to the home.

Since it no longer exists.

Even if the home does exist, the water and the electricity and the heating and the food and the medical care and the schools and all other essential services are destroyed.

Since they no longer exist.

And it is impossible to rebuild, since building materials are considered controlled goods that cannot be imported.

[wat0n]

Netanyahu is talking about a new major assault.

Guess what that's going to do to humanitarian efforts? It's not hard, give it a f***ing try.

What you have is fantasy.

And Netanyahu is also saying no assault will happen without an evacuation of civilians.

It's interesting how selective you are when it comes to what Netanyahu says.

If the home has been destroyed by the IDF, it is impossible for people to return to the home.

Since it no longer exists.

Even if the home does exist, the water and the electricity and the heating and the food and the medical care and the schools and all other essential services are destroyed.

Since they no longer exist.

And it is impossible to rebuild, since building materials are considered controlled goods that cannot be imported.

Reconstruction will begin after the war, that's a no brainer. In the meantime, Palestinians will likely return north and live in tents very much like Mosul's residents did after the defeat of ISIS.

[Pants-of-dog]

So, yes, the idea is to bomb all of Gaza and force the population to move somewhere they cannot live and will be bombed in the future.

[late]

And Netanyahu is also saying no assault will happen without an evacuation of civilians.

It's interesting how selective you are when it comes to what Netanyahu says.

We're talking about a million starving and sick people. People that don't have fuel, or food, or medicine.

My tolerance of BS is not infinite.