A full-scale Israeli military operation in Rafah could lead to a slaughter and cripple life-saving humanitarian work throughout the Gaza Strip, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Friday. The UN, governments and aid agencies have been appealing to Israeli authorities for weeks to spare Rafah, but a ground operation in Gaza's southernmost city, where more than 1.5 million people are at risk, is looming on the immediate horizon.
“Any ground operation would mean more suffering and death” for the 1.2 million displaced Palestinians sheltering in and around the Strip’s southernmost city, OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke told journalists in Geneva.
He added that Rafah was also the heart of humanitarian operations in Gaza, acting as a transshipment point for the life-saving assistance.
“It is where dozens of aid organizations store their lifesaving supplies that they deliver to civilians across the Gaza Strip. Rafah is central to the UN and partners’ ongoing efforts to provide food, water, health, sanitation, hygiene, and other critical support to people,” Laerke said.
From Rafah, several UN programs and their partners run services throughout the Gaza Strip, such as operating sexual and reproductive health clinics at field hospitals in Rafah or treating acutely malnourished children.
“Most importantly, there are hundreds of thousands of civilians who have fled to Rafah to escape bombardment, an imminent famine and disease,” the OCHA spokesman said, warning that they would be at imminent risk of death in case of an Israeli assault.
Echoing these concerns, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said that "Band-Aid" contingency plans have been put in place in case a full-scale military incursion does indeed materialize, but they will not be enough to prevent Gaza's humanitarian catastrophe from getting worse.
The WHO warned that a full-scale military operation in Rafah could lead to a bloodbath, saying Gaza's broken health system would not be able to cope with the surge in casualties and deaths that an incursion would cause.
“Despite measures, the ailing health system will not be able to withstand the potential scale of devastation that the incursion will cause,” said Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).
“With more than 1.2 million people crammed in Rafah, an operation will result in worsening the humanitarian catastrophe,” he said.
Speaking from Jerusalem on Friday, Peeperkorn told journalists in Geneva that an assault on Rafah would trigger a new wave of displacement that “will lead to more overcrowding, reduced access to essential food, water and sanitation services, and increased infectious disease outbreaks.”
The WHO reports that most health facilities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed amid repeated attacks and airstrikes by Israeli forces. It says the health system is barely surviving, with 12 out of 36 hospitals and 22 out of 88 primary health care facilities only partially functional.
The UN health agency says three small hospitals in Rafah that are currently partially operational "will become unsafe for patients, staff, ambulances and humanitarian workers to reach if hostilities intensify.
This would have a knock-on effect on the entire health system, as patients would have to be transferred to other, already overcrowded hospitals.
“Every time we have seen when there is a military incursion in places in the north, in Gaza City, or Khan Younis, these hospitals very quickly become not reachable. So, they go from being partly functional very quickly to nonfunctional,” Peeperkorn said.
As part of contingency efforts in southern Gaza, WHO and partners are setting up a new field hospital in Al Mawasi in Rafah and a large warehouse in the central Gaza City of Deir Al Balah, from where medical supplies can be quickly sent to facilities in the Middle Area and North Gaza.
Plans are underway to establish additional warehouses where medical supplies can be pre-positioned. The Nasser Medical Complex, the main hospital in southern Gaza, was severely damaged and put out of commission amid heavy fighting and bombing in Khan Younis.
Peeperkorn said the complex is being refurbished, and that hospital staff have completed the first phase of restoration, “including cleaning and ensuring essential equipment is functioning.”
He noted that the emergency ward, the maternity ward, nine operating theaters, intensive care unit and several other departments now are partially operational.
“I want to really say that this contingency plan is a Band-Aid. It will absolutely not prevent the expected substantial additional mortality and morbidity caused by a military operation,” he said.
“We do not want to make those plans. I want to make it very clear: We do not want to make these plans. We all, of course, hope and expect that this military incursion will not happen and that we will move to a sustained cease-fire.”
Aid agencies agree that there have been recent improvements in getting more aid into Gaza, but say it is still not enough and "the risk of famine is not over."
Laerke told journalists that he had no idea whether it was possible to move 1.2 million people out of Rafah to a so-called safe place in advance of a military incursion by Israel. However, he scotched any suggestion of UN involvement in such a scheme.
“The United Nations is not part of any planning and will not participate in any ordered non-voluntary evacuation of people,” he said.
In a statement Tuesday, Martin Griffiths, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and head of OCHA, warned that “a ground operation in Rafah will be nothing short of a tragedy beyond words.”
“For the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled to Gaza’s southernmost point to escape disease, famine, mass graves and direct fighting, a ground invasion would spell even more trauma and death,” he said.
Griffiths said a ground operation would also strike a disastrous blow to agencies struggling to provide humanitarian aid despite active hostilities, impassable roads, unexploded ordnance, fuel shortages, delays at checkpoints, and Israeli restrictions.
Griffiths noted recent improvements in bringing more aid into Gaza, but he said they cannot be used to prepare for or justify a full-blown military assault on Rafah. Civilians must be protected, and their needs must be met.
OCHA reports that aid agencies continue to face a number of access restrictions in reaching people in need throughout Gaza, including denials of planned missions or lengthy delays at Israeli military checkpoints on the roads used to travel between northern and southern Gaza.
According to the UN office, more than a quarter of humanitarian missions to northern Gaza in April were obstructed by Israeli authorities - and 10 percent were denied.
Also on Tuesday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned of “devastating” and “serious” consequences of a potential military assault on Rafah. The UN chief stressed that the situation is “worsening by the day,” notwithstanding recent progress in bringing more aid into Gaza.
To stave off “an entirely preventable, human-made famine,” he reiterated his “call on the Israeli authorities to allow and facilitate safe, rapid and unimpeded access for humanitarian aid and humanitarian workers, including UNRWA, throughout Gaza.”
On Friday, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned that a ground operation in the southern city would lead to "catastrophe on top of catastrophe" for some 600,000 children, underscoring the unimaginable toll the war is taking on children.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said nearly all the children in Rafah are "either injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized or living with disabilities."
Meanwhile, Israeli bombardment from the air, land and sea continues across much of the Gaza Strip, resulting in further civilian deaths, displacement and destruction of the civilian infrastructure on which Palestinians depend.
Half of Gaza's population - some 1.1 million people - face catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation, with famine now imminent or already occurring in northern Gaza. The entire population of the Gaza Strip - some 2.3 million people - suffers from high levels of acute food insecurity.
More than 34,600 people, mostly women and children, have been killed and more than 77,800 others injured by Israeli security forces in Gaza since October 7 last year. Among the dead are more than 14,500 children and more than 9,500 women.
The fatalities include at least 254 aid workers, 185 UN staff, 492 health workers and 141 journalists. More than 10,000 others are feared buried under the rubble in Gaza and are presumed dead.
Some information for this report provided by VOA.
Further information
Full text: UN relief chief: A ground operation in Rafah will be nothing short of a tragedy beyond words, Statement by Martin Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, released April 30, 2024
https://www.unocha.org/news/un-relief-chief-ground-operation-rafah-will-be-nothing-short-tragedy-beyond-words