Across the Gaza Strip
Report: Israel is building an identity check facility
March 22, 2024, 9:53 a.m
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Contrary to international efforts to reach a ceasefire, Israel does not want to be dissuaded from a ground offensive in the city of Rafah, which is overcrowded with refugees. According to a media report, the military is now planning a security checkpoint facility that will be the size of two football fields.
According to a media report, the Israeli armed forces are building a large facility in the Gaza Strip to control refugee Palestinians before they return to the north of the sealed-off coastal strip. As the Israeli television station Kan reported on Thursday evening, the facility is being built near the coast on a corridor developed by the army that runs from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean and divides the coastal area. The facility will be the size of two football fields. In addition to security checks, it is also being checked whether it could be used to store relief supplies, it said. There is a new pier on the coast nearby.
After the start of the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip on the instructions of the Israeli military. After the Israeli army began taking action against the Islamist Hamas there, more than a million civilians are now seeking shelter in a confined space in Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt.
Israel is now planning to take action against the last Hamas battalions there too. The people should first be brought to safety further north. Allies such as the USA and the EU want to dissuade Israel from launching a ground offensive in view of the catastrophic humanitarian situation.
The UN Security Council is expected to vote today on a draft resolution introduced by the US calling for an immediate and lasting ceasefire, diplomats said. EU heads of state and government also called for an immediate ceasefire at a summit meeting in view of the terrible plight of the civilian population in Gaza, as EU Council President Charles Michel announced on Thursday evening.
Nevertheless, Israel is sticking to its planned ground offensive in the city of Rafah, which is overcrowded with refugees. “Even if the whole world turns against Israel, including the United States, we will fight until the battle is won,” Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer said in a podcast on Thursday.