Israel vowed that its forces would target Hamas in Rafah, the southern Gaza city packed with civilians sheltering from the war, while both sides weighed a U.S.-backed proposal to stop the fighting and set more hostages free.
An Israeli military operation in Rafah, an area in the southern Gaza Strip that abuts Egypt, could open a risky new phase of the war.
More than a million Palestinian civilians are crowded into the area after many of them fled their homes in central and northern Gaza.
The Israeli military has urged Palestinians to move southward for their own safety.
Aid workers and Palestinian residents warn that a military offensive in the area would deepen Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, in which much of the strip has been reduced to rubble and 1.7 million people pushed from their homes.
“It won’t be like the north,” said Avi Jager, a military expert with Israel’s Reichman University. Densely packed streets where tanks can’t maneuver would mean any Israeli military operation in Rafah “will be more in the style of raids.”
“It’s hard for me to see how the world would stand by and they’ll just keep pushing farther down, but that is the trajectory,” said Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel analyst with International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution think tank. “I think the military is very frustrated with the political echelon and has something to prove and wants to come out with achievements.”
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