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The main United Nations agency aiding Palestinians in Gaza said early Sunday that about 300,000 people had fled over the past week from Rafah, the city in the enclave’s southernmost tip where more than a million displaced Gazans had sought shelter from Israeli bombardments elsewhere over the past seven months.
The U.N. agency, known as UNRWA, made the announcement on social media hours after the Israeli government issued new evacuation orders in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza, deepening fears that the Israeli military was preparing to invade the city despite international warnings.
Paltel, the Gaza Strip’s largest telecommunications company, said on Sunday that internet service was down in parts of southern Gaza because of Israeli military operations and that crews were working to restore services “as quickly as possible.”
Doctors Without Borders, an aid group whose staff members have been working in Gaza during the war, also said on social media that it had started to refer the last 22 patients at one hospital, the Rafah Indonesian Field Hospital, to other facilities because it could “no longer guarantee their safety.”
Gaza’s health care system is in a state of near collapse, and one of the three major hospitals in Rafah that were partly functioning before the Israeli military’s operation there this month has already shut down.
There has been intense bombardment and fighting around Rafah since Monday, when Israel seized control of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, largely halting the flow of aid. Dozens of people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Rafah since then, local health officials say.
Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets over parts of Rafah and over a part of northern Gaza on Saturday that ordered people to flee. The warning about Rafah added to existing evacuations orders there.
The Israeli military has told Gazans in Rafah to temporarily evacuate to an “expanded humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi,” a coastal area north of the city that the United Nations and international officials have stressed is neither safe nor equipped to receive them.
“Forcing civilians to evacuate Rafah to unsafe zones is intolerable,” Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s top diplomat, wrote late Saturday on the social media platform X. He urged Israel not to go ahead with a ground offensive in Rafah, saying it would “further exacerbate an already dire humanitarian crisis.”
Israel has called its incursions into eastern Rafah this month “precise operations” targeting Hamas, the armed group that led the Oct. 7 attacks into southern Israel. Several countries and international aid groups have condemned the prospect of a full-scale Rafah invasion, saying it would be catastrophic for civilians.
President Biden paused an arms shipment to Israel out of concern that the weapons might be used in a major assault on Rafah, and he has warned that the United States would withhold certain weapons, including heavy bombs and artillery shells, if Israel goes ahead with the operation.
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The Israeli military ordered the evacuation of Jabaliya, in northern Gaza, on Saturday as it stepped up attacks there because, it said in a statement, Hamas was trying “to reassemble its terrorist infrastructure and operatives in the area.”
Israel first invaded northern Gaza after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, taking over territory and pushing south as it took over Hamas strongholds. But the military has yet to decisively defeat Hamas, many analysts say, and its return to Jabaliya was another indicator that the war could drag on.
The Israeli military has said it successfully killed many of Hamas’s key commanders in Jabaliya, which it considers a Hamas stronghold and base for operations. In recent weeks, however, Israeli forces repeatedly returned to the area — including the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City and Beit Hanoun — arguing that militants were again active there. Five soldiers were killed on Friday in northern Gaza, at least four of them by an explosive device, the Israeli military said.
On Saturday, hours after urging people to evacuate, the Israeli military said it had begun “striking Hamas terror targets” in the Jabaliya area.
In a statement, Hamas accused Israel of “escalating its aggression against civilians all across Gaza” and vowed to continue fighting.
Israeli military analysts called Hamas’s apparent resurgence in northern Gaza the result of Israel’s failure to establish any alternative government there, leaving behind a vacuum that allowed for the return of an insurgency. Israeli forces sweep through areas, but when they inevitably retreat, Hamas reasserts its control, either directly or through allies, said Michael Milshtein, a former senior Israeli intelligence official.
“Hamas still rules,” he said. “Their forces have been badly damaged, but they still have capabilities. There’s still no alternative to them in Gaza, and every alternative we tried to establish failed.”
For months, Israel’s military has claimed to have “dismantled” most of Hamas’s military battalions. But Israeli leaders have also conceded that their forces will have to engage in a protracted campaign to quash what Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, called “pockets of resistance.”
In late March, Israeli forces stormed Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex, for the second time, claiming that it had become a base for Hamas’s attempt to reassert its rule in northern Gaza. At least 200 were killed there and hundreds more arrested, according to the Israeli military.
The battle left much of the hospital in ruins, and Palestinians who returned to the complex described finding numerous corpses scattered in and around it.
It was unclear how many people heeded Israel’s warnings to leave Jabaliya. Fatma Edaama, a 36-year-old resident, has yet to leave. She said on Saturday that she hoped the latest fighting would be limited enough to allow her to stay safely.
“Our lives already ended in 2006,” when Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections, leading Israel to begin tightening restrictions on Gaza, she said, adding: “There’s no safe place for us to go. Added to that, most of the people in our house are elderly or sick. Where could we take them?”
