Israeli tanks and troops appeared to push their way into the southern Gaza city of Rafah early Tuesday after Israel said a truce offer from the Hamas terror group did not meet its demands and announcing that it okayed moving ahead with the long-threatened offensive, Report informs via the Times of Israel.
The Israeli military said it was conducting “targeted strikes” against Hamas in eastern Rafah, thought to be the terror group’s final stronghold.
Soon after, Israeli tanks entered Gaza near Rafah, reaching as close as 200 meters (650 feet) from the Rafah Crossing terminal with neighboring Egypt, a Palestinian security official and an Egyptian official said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.
Gunfire and explosions could be heard in footage aired from the crossing by Egypt’s al-Qahera TV, which showed the Egyptian side of the crossing empty of people. the rumble of tanks and drone of helicopters were also audible.
The Egyptian official said the operation appeared to be limited in scope. He and Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV said Israeli officials informed the Egyptians that the troops would withdraw after completing the operation.
On Sunday, Hamas fighters near the Rafah crossing fired rockets into southern Israel, killing four Israeli soldiers.
Palestinians also reported heavy airstrikes in the east of the city, killing at least five. Israel has carried out airstrikes in Rafah with some regularity in recent months, even as it has held off on sending troops into the city amid vociferous international opposition to military operations in the city, where some 1.5 million Palestinians are thought to be sheltering, most of them displaced from other parts of the Strip.
A US official said Washington did not believe the offensive in Rafah represented a major military operation, though the action was still concerning.
The apparent operation came after a day that saw Israel issue evacuation orders for some 100,000 Gazans in parts of eastern Rafah, who were told to evacuate to a “safe zone” near Khan Younis, north of Rafah.
Hours later, Hamas said it had accepted an Egyptian and Qatari ceasefire and hostage release proposal, but Israeli officials said the Hamas terms did not match what Israel had agreed to, though working-level teams would travel to Cairo Tuesday to resume indirect talks.
Declaring that Hamas’s latest offer was “far from [meeting] Israel’s essential requirements,” a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the war cabinet had decided unanimously to push ahead with an IDF operation in Rafah “in order to apply military pressure on Hamas, with the goal of making progress on freeing the hostages and the other war aims.”
The war erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, when thousands of terrorists murdered some 1,200 people and seized 252 hostages, mostly civilians, many amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
In response to the onslaught, Israel launched a wide-scale offensive aiming to eliminate the terror group’s military and governance capabilities in Gaza and free the hostages, 128 of whom remain in captivity.
More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, according to unverifiable figures from Hamas health officials that do not distinguish between gunmen and civilians. Israel says it has killed 13,000 Hamas gunmen in Gaza as well as 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7. Some 270 IDF soldiers have been killed in the fighting in Gaza.