Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military Friday to prepare a plan to evacuate Palestinian civilians from the Gaza town of Rafah, on the Egyptian border, and to attack and destroy the last Hamas battalions there.
Israel has said for days that it intends to attack Hamas in Rafah, the last area of the Gaza Strip that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have not struck. The town is crucial to Israeli victory: it is used by Hamas to smuggle weapons, and people in and out.
On Friday, just before sundown and the onset of the Jewish Sabbath, Netanyahu delivered the following statement (translated from Hebrew by the Government Press Organization):
It is impossible to achieve the goal of the war of eliminating Hamas by leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah.
On the contrary, it is clear that intense activity in Rafah requires that civilians evacuate the areas of combat.
Therefore, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the IDF and the security establishment to submit to the Cabinet a combined plan for evacuating the population and destroying the battalions.
While there is support among the Israeli public for a hostage deal that would include an extended pause in fighting, Israelis generally do not want to stop the war until Hamas has been destroyed and can never threaten it with attacks or rockets ever again.
On Thursday evening, thousands of Israeli reservists demonstrated outside the main government offices in Jerusalem, demanding that the IDF fight until victory had been achieved, and opposing any weak deal that would let Hamas survive in Gaza.
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