Palestinians Brace for Rafah Evacuation, Israeli Assault Plan

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, take shelter in a tent camp - Reuters
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, take shelter in a tent camp - Reuters
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Palestinians Brace for Rafah Evacuation, Israeli Assault Plan

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, take shelter in a tent camp - Reuters
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, take shelter in a tent camp - Reuters

Trapped in and around Rafah, more than 1 million Palestinians braced for Israel to complete a plan to evacuate them and launch a ground assault against Hamas fighters in the southern Gaza city.
Aid agencies warned that large numbers of civilians could die in the Israeli offensive and the UN Palestinian refugee agency said it did not know how long it could work "in such a high risk operation."
"There is a sense of growing anxiety, growing panic in Rafah," said Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UNRWA agency. "People have no idea where to go."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office on Friday announced that the military was ordered to develop a plan "for evacuating the population and destroying" four Hamas battalions that it said were deployed in Rafah.
Israel cannot achieve its goal of eliminating the Hamas militants who rule Gaza while those units remain, it said.
The statement, issued two days after Netanyahu rejected a Hamas ceasefire proposal, opens new tab that included the release of hostages held by the Palestinian militants, gave no further details.

Washington, Israel's main supporter, said it would not back an assault that did not protect civilians, and had briefed Israel on a new US national security memorandum reminding countries receiving US arms to adhere to international law.
"There are no new standards in this memo. We are not imposing new standards for military aid," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. "They (the Israelis) reiterated their willingness to provide these types of assurances."
More than a million people driven southwards by more than four months of Israeli bombing of Gaza are packed into Rafah and surrounding areas on the coastal enclave's border with Egypt, which has reinforced the frontier, fearing an exodus.
Doctors and aid workers are struggling to supply even basic aid to Palestinians sheltering around Rafah.
Israeli forces have been moving southwards towards the city after first storming northern Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel by Hamas gunmen.
The United Nations said Palestinian civilians in Rafah, opens new tab require protection, but there should be no forced mass displacement, which is barred by international law.
"No war can be allowed in a gigantic refugee camp," said Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, warning of a "bloodbath" if Israeli troops move into Rafah.
The Palestinian Presidency said Netanyahu's plans aimed to displace the Palestinian people from their land.
"Taking this step threatens security and peace in the region and the world. It crosses all red lines," said the office of Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority that exerts partial self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
An Israeli official who declined to be named said that Israel would try to organize for people in Rafah, most of whom fled there from the north, to be moved back northwards ahead of any assault.
Gaza's health ministry said at least 27,947 Palestinians had been confirmed killed in the conflict and 67,459 injured. More could be buried under rubble.
Almost one in 10 Gazans under the age of five are now acutely malnourished, according to initial UN data from arm measurements showing physical wasting.
The charity ActionAid said some Gazans were eating grass.
"Every single person in Gaza is now hungry, and people have just 1.5 to 2 litres of unsafe water per day to meet all their needs," it said.



Sudan's RSF and Allies Formalize Vision for Parallel Government

A man walks by a house hit in recent fighting in Khartoum, Sudan, an area torn by fighting between the military and the notorious paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, on April 25, 2023. (AP)
A man walks by a house hit in recent fighting in Khartoum, Sudan, an area torn by fighting between the military and the notorious paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, on April 25, 2023. (AP)
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Sudan's RSF and Allies Formalize Vision for Parallel Government

A man walks by a house hit in recent fighting in Khartoum, Sudan, an area torn by fighting between the military and the notorious paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, on April 25, 2023. (AP)
A man walks by a house hit in recent fighting in Khartoum, Sudan, an area torn by fighting between the military and the notorious paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, on April 25, 2023. (AP)

Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied groups signed a transitional constitution on Tuesday that takes them a step closer to setting up a parallel government during a two-year-old war with the army that threatens to split the country.

The paramilitary RSF has recently been on the back foot in the conflict, which has caused mass displacement, extreme hunger, bouts of ethnically-charged killings and sexual violence.

As fighting rages, the RSF on Tuesday launched its latest long-range drone attack on power infrastructure, targeting Sudan's largest power generation station at the Merowe Dam, according to an army statement and knocking out power in swathes of northern Sudan.

The army claimed gains in the Sharg el-Nil area as it sought to surround the RSF in the capital, Khartoum.

The RSF-led constitution is designed to supplant a constitution signed after the army and RSF ousted long-ruling autocrat Omar al-Bashir during an uprising in 2019.

In 2021 the two military factions staged a coup, derailing a transition towards civilian rule, but in April 2023 plans for a new transition triggered warfare between them.

The RSF and its allies had in late February agreed in principle to form a government for a "New Sudan" as they sought to pull legitimacy from the existing army-led government and facilitate advanced arms imports.

The new constitution formally establishes a government and maps out what it describes as a federal, secular state, split into eight regions.

It provides for a bill of basic rights, giving regions the right to self-determination should certain conditions, chief among them separation of religion and the state, not be met.

It also calls for a single national army, with the signatories as the "nucleus". Elections are mentioned as an outcome of the transitional period, without any fixed timetable.

Signatories include the powerful and secular-minded SPLM-N, which controls vast areas in Sudan's South Kordofan, and other smaller groups.

The RSF and its allies have said the government will be formed in the coming weeks but it is unclear who will be in it or where it will operate from.