Israel’s military on Tuesday said it had seized control of the crucial Rafah crossing between southern Gaza and Egypt as part of what it called a “precise counterterrorism operation.”
The move came just hours after Hamas said late Monday that it had accepted a ceasefire deal brokered by international mediators. A statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Hamas proposal was “far from meeting Israel’s core demands” and that the war cabinet had unanimously decided to continue the operation in Rafah to “apply military pressure on Hamas.”
The Israel Defense Forces shared images of its tanks on X and said its forces had established “operation control of the Gazan side of the crossing” in eastern Rafah after the military received intelligence that it was being “used for terrorist purposes.” It also claimed that mortars fired from the area on Sunday killed four Israeli soldiers.
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The overnight incursion came amid international pressure on Netanyahu against his stated aim of a ground invasion of Rafah, where over a million displaced Gazans have sought shelter from the seven-month-old war. President Joe Biden on Monday again warned Netanyahu not to invade even as Israel ordered around 100,000 Palestinians to leave eastern areas of Rafah.
A spokesperson for Egypt’s Foreign Ministry condemned the border seizure as a “dangerous escalation” and said it cautioned Israel against jeopardizing diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire. Jens Laerke, the U.N. humanitarian office’s spokesman, separately said Tuesday that the two main crossings into southern Gaza are now shut, meaning that the “arteries for getting aid into Gaza are currently choked off.”
