Israel-Gaza war live: continuous attacks reported in Rafah after US presents plan to end war

Rafah resident: ‘artillery bombardment has not stopped for a single moment’ overnight

On Saturday, residents reported tank fire in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood in west Rafah, while witnesses in the east and centre of the southern city described intense artillery shelling.

“From the early hours of the night until this morning, the aerial and artillery bombardment has not stopped for a single moment,” a resident from west Rafah told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“There are a number of occupation (Israeli) snipers in high-rise buildings overseeing all areas of Tal al-Sultan … making the situation very dangerous.”

There was also shelling and gunfire from the Israeli army in Gaza City, in the north of the Palestinian territory, according to an AFP reporter.

For months, Israel urged Palestinian civilians to seek safety in Rafah as much of the rest of Gaza saw fighting and intense Israeli bombardments. Now Palestinian people are being told to move again, as Israeli troops move in to the last area that had not seen ground operations, but residents say there is nowhere else safe to go.

Growing international outrage about the Israeli push into Rafah, including an order from the UN’s top court to stop the offensive, and sharp criticism from the US after last week’s widely condemned attack, in which an Israeli airstrike killed at least 45 people in a tent camp in Rafah, have not had any apparent impact on Israel’s military plans.

Netanyahu insists on Hamas’ ‘destruction’ as part of plan to end war in Gaza

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has insisted on Hamas’s destruction and said Israel’s conditions for ending the war in Gaza remain unchanged.

It came a day after Joe Biden said Israel was offering a new roadmap towards a full ceasefire in Gaza.

The US president said Israel’s three-stage offer would begin with a six-week phase that would see Israeli forces withdraw from all populated areas of Gaza.

It would also see the “release of a number of hostages, including women, the elderly, the wounded, in exchange for (the) release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners”, Biden said.

In a statement issued on Saturday, Netanyahu described the commitment to a permanent ceasefire before Hamas military and government capacity is destroyed as a “non-starter”.

Netanyahu said:

Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.

Under the proposal, Israel will continue to insist these conditions are met before a permanent ceasefire is put in place. The notion that Israel will agree to a permanent ceasefire before these conditions are fulfilled is a non-starter.

A senior administration official said yesterday the four-and-a-half-page proposal had been endorsed by the Israeli government and had been presented to Hamas on Friday.

But it was unclear how enthusiastically Netanyahu had embraced the proposal, which Hamas said it had responded to “positively” (see earlier post at 08.31).